every place, as assuming an inverse proportion to the size of the whole; and similarly with every other diffusion of a force, through spaces of different sizes.
2.If the force he an immediate attraction at a distance, the direction of the attraction must still less be represented as rays going out from the attracting point, but rather as coalescing from all points of the surrounding disc (the diameter of which is the given distance) at the attracting point. For the line of direction of the movement to this point, which is its cause and goal, assigns the terminus a quo, whence the lines must begin, namely from all points of the surface, from which they take their direction to the attracting middle-point, and not conversely; for the size of the surface alone determines the number of lines; the middle point leaves them undetermined.[1]
3.If the force be an immediate repulsion, so that a point
- ↑ It is impossible to represent surfaces at given distances as wholly filled by the action of lines spreading out from a point in the form of rays, whether of luminosity or attraction. Thus, by such diverging rays of light, the inferior luminosity of a distant surface would merely rest on the fact that between the luminous there remain non-luminous places, and these so much the larger the farther the surfaces are removed. Euler's hypothesis avoids this inconvenience, but has certainly so much the greater difficulty in rendering the rectilinear motion of the light conceivable. But this difficulty arises from an easily avoidable mathematical conception of light-matter as a mass of globules, which according to their variously oblique arrangement, as regards the direction of the impact, would produce a lateral motion of light; whereas nothing prevents us from conceiving this matter as originally and in every sense fluid, instead of as divided into fixed globules. If the mathematician wishes to render intuitable the diminution of light by increasing distance, he makes use of rays spreading in a circle, in order to exhibit on the disc of its diffusion the size of the space, in which the same quantity of light is to be uniformly diffused between these circle-rays, in short, the diminution of the degree of luminosity; but he does not intend these rays to be regarded as the only [places of] luminosity, as though there were always places devoid of light, to be met with between them, these increasing with the distance. If one wishes to conceive each of these places as throughout luminous, the same quantity of luminosity which covers the smaller must be conceived as in equal proportion in the larger, and therefore, in order to indicate the rectilinear direction, they must be drawn from the surface and all its points to the luminous straight lines. The effect and its quantity must be previously fixed, and the cause indicated in accordance therewith. The same applies to rays of attraction, if one chooses to call them so, and indeed to all directions of forces, which are to fill a space, be it even a corporeal one, from a point.
