reason for believing in the existence of material objects? That, too, is only a convenient hypothesis; only, it will never cease to be so, while some day, no doubt, the ether will be thrown aside as useless.
But at the present moment the laws of optics, and the equations which translate them into the language of analysis, hold good—at least as a first approximation. It will therefore be always useful to study a theory which brings these equations into connection.
The undulatory theory is based on a molecular hypothesis; this is an advantage to those who think they can discover the cause under the law. But others find in it a reason for distrust; and this distrust seems to me as unfounded as the illusions of the former. These hypotheses play but a secondary rôle. They may be sacrificed, and the sole reason why this is not generally done is, that it would involve a certain loss of lucidity in the explanation. In fact, if we look at it a little closer we shall see that we borrow from molecular hypotheses but two things—the principle of the conservation of energy, and the linear form of the equations, which is the general law of small movements as of all small variations. This explains why most of the conclusions of Fresnel remain unchanged when we adopt the electro-magnetic theory of light.
Maxwell's Theory.—We all know that it was Maxwell who connected by a slender tie two branches of physics—optics and electricity—until
