vibrations take place.' And he adds further on, that his view
'endeavours to dismiss the ether but not the vibrations.' The idea
here set forth is the natural supplement of his previous notion,
that it is gravitating force which constitutes matter, each atom
extending, so to say, throughout the whole of the solar system.

The letter to Mr. Phillips winds up with this beautiful
conclusion:--

'I think it likely that I have made many mistakes in the preceding
pages, for even to myself my ideas on this point appear only as the
shadow of a speculation, or as one of those impressions upon the
mind which are allowable for a time as guides to thought and
research. He who labours in experimental inquiries, knows how
numerous these are, and how often their apparent fitness and beauty
vanish before the progress and development of real natural truth.'

Let it then be remembered that Faraday entertained notions regarding
matter and force altogether distinct from the views generally held
by scientific men. Force seemed to him an entity dwelling along the
line in which it is exerted. The lines along which gravity acts
between the sun and earth seem figured in his mind as so many
elastic strings; indeed he accepts the assumed instantaneity of
gravity as the expression of the enormous elasticity of the 'lines
of weight.' Such views, fruitful in the case of magnetism, barren,
as yet, in the case of gravity, explain his efforts to transform
this latter force. When he goes into the open air and permits his
helices to fall, to his mind's eye they are tearing through the
lines of gravitating power, and hence his hope and conviction that
an effect would and ought to be produced. It must ever be borne in