Potential Matter.—A Holiday Dream

Abstract

WHEN the year's work is over and all sense of responsibility has left us, who has not occasionally set his fancy free to dream about the unknown, perhaps the unknowable? And what should more frequently cross our dreams than what is so persistently before us in our serious moments of consciousness—the universal law of gravitation. We can leave our spectroscopes and magnets at home, but we cannot fly from the mysterious force which causes the rain-drops to fall from the clouds, and our children to tumble down the staircase. What is gravity? We teach our students to accept the fact and not to trouble about its cause—most excellent advice—but this is vacation time, and we are not restricted to lecture-room science.