[Footnote 1: "Preuve de la supposition que j'ay faite: Que la matiere subtile ou etheree est necessairement composee de PETITS TOURBILLONS; et qu'ils sont les causes naturelles de tous les changements qui arrivent a la matiere; ce que je confirme par i'explication des effets les plus generaux de la Physique, tels que sont la durete des corps, leur fluidite, leur pesanteur, legerete, la lumiere et la refraction et reflexion de ses rayons."--Malebranche, "Recherche de la Verite," 1712.]
[Footnote 2: Proc. R.S.E., March 2, 1874, and July 5, 1875.]
[Footnote 3: On the other hand, in liquids, on account of the crowdedness of the molecules, the diffusion of heat must be chiefly by interchange of energies between the molecules, and should be, as experiment proves it is, enormously more rapid than the diffusion of the molecules themselves, and this again ought to be much less rapid than either the material or thermal diffusivities of gases. Thus the diffusivity of common salt through water was found by Fick to be as small as 0.0000112 square centimeter per second; nearly 200 times as great as this is the diffusivity of heat through water, which was found by J.T. Bottomley to be about 0.002 square centimeter per second. The material diffusivities of gases, according to Loschmidt's experiments, range from 0.98 (the interdiffusivity of carbonic acid and nitrous oxide) to 0.642 (the interdiffusivity of carbonic oxide and hydrogen), while the thermal diffusivities of gases, calculated according to Clausius' and Maxwell's kinetic theory of gases, are 0.089 for carbonic acid, 0.16 for common air of other gases of nearly the same density, and 1.12 for hydrogen (all, both material and thermal, being reckoned in square centimeters per second).]
Rich as it is in practical results, the kinetic theory of gases, as hitherto developed, stops absolutely short at the atom or molecule, and gives not even a suggestion toward explaining the properties in virtue of which the atoms or molecules mutually influence one another. For some guidance toward a deeper and more comprehensive theory of matter, we may look back with advantage to the end of last century and beginning of this century, and find Rumford's conclusion regarding the heat generated in boring a brass gun: "It appears to me to be extremely difficult, if not quite impossible, to form any distinct idea of anything capable of being excited and communicated in the manner the heat was excited and communicated in these experiments, except it be MOTION;" and Davy's still more suggestive statements: "The phenomena of repulsion are not dependent on a peculiar elastic fluid for their existence." ... "Heat may be defined as a peculiar motion, probably a vibration, of the corpuscles of bodies, tending to separate them." ... "To distinguish this motion from others, and to signify the causes of our sensations of heat, etc., the name _repulsive_ motion has been adopted." Here we have a most important idea. It would be somewhat a bold figure of speech to say the earth and moon are kept apart by a repulsive motion; and yet, after all, what is centrifugal force but a repulsive motion, and may it not be that there is no such thing as repulsion, and that it is solely by inertia that what seems to be repulsion is produced? Two bodies fly together, and, accelerated by mutual attraction, if they do not precisely hit one another, they cannot but separate in virtue of the inertia of their masses. So, after dashing past one another in sharply concave curves round their common center of gravity, they fly asunder again. A careless onlooker might imagine they had repelled one another, and might not notice the difference between what he actually sees and what he would see if the two bodies had been projected with great velocity toward one another, and either colliding and rebounding, or repelling one another into sharply convex continuous curves, fly asunder again.