which the comparison is possible, the force is proportional not only to the mass of the attracted body, but also to that of the attracting body, as well as being inversely proportional to the square of the distance. Gravitation thus appears no longer as a property peculiar to the central body of a revolving system, but as belonging to a planet in just the same way as to the sun, and to the moon or to a stone in just the same way as to the earth.
Moreover, the fact that separate bodies on the surface of the earth are attracted by the earth, and therefore in turn attract it, suggests that this power of attracting other bodies which the celestial bodies are shewn to possess does not belong to each celestial body as a whole, but to the separate particles making it up, so that, for example, the force with which Jupiter and the sun mutually attract one another is the result of compounding the forces with which the separate particles making up Jupiter attract the separate particles making up the sun. Thus is suggested finally the law of gravitation in its most general form: every particle of matter attracts every other particle with a force proportional to the mass of each, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.[1]
182. In all the astronomical cases already referred to the attractions between the various celestial bodies have been treated as if they were accurately directed towards their centres, and the distance between the bodies has been taken to be the distance between their centres. Newton's doubts on this point, in the case of the earth's attraction of bodies, have been already referred to (§ 173); but early in 1685 he succeeded in justifying this assumption. By a singularly beautiful and simple course of reasoning he shewed (Principia, Book I., propositions 70, 71) that, if a body is spherical in form and equally dense throughout, it attracts any particle external to it exactly as if its whole mass were concentrated at its centre. He shewed, further, that the same is true for a sphere of variable density, provided it can be regarded as made up of a series of spherical shells, having a common centre, each of uniform
- ↑ As far as I know Newton gives no short statement of the law in a perfectly complete and general form; separate parts of it are given in different passages of the Principia.
