bewildered him. In his attempts to get rid of this perplexity, he
was often unconsciously rebelling against the limitations of the
intellect itself. He loved to quote Newton upon this point; over
and over again he introduces his memorable words, 'That gravity
should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one
body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum and without
the mediation of anything else, by and through which this action and
force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an
absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a
competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it. Gravity must
be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws;
but whether this agent be material or immaterial, I have left to the
consideration of my readers.'[1]

Faraday does not see the same difficulty in his contiguous particles.
And yet, by transferring the conception from masses to particles,
we simply lessen size and distance, but we do not alter the quality
of the conception. Whatever difficulty the mind experiences in
conceiving of action at sensible distances, besets it also when it
attempts to conceive of action at insensible distances. Still the
investigation of the point whether electric and magnetic effects
were wrought out through the intervention of contiguous particles or
not, had a physical interest altogether apart from the metaphysical
difficulty. Faraday grapples with the subject experimentally.
By simple intuition he sees that action at a distance must be exerted
in straight lines. Gravity, he knows, will not turn a corner, but
exerts its pull along a right line; hence his aim and effort to
ascertain whether electric action ever takes place in curved lines.
This once proved, it would follow that the action is carried on by
means of a medium surrounding the electrified bodies. His experiments