thereby less clear or less complete, and yet it contains a theory which is self-sufficient, and which can be understood without reading a word of what precedes or follows. But it is not only independent of the rest of the book; it is difficult to reconcile it with the fundamental ideas of the volume. Maxwell does not even attempt to reconcile it; he merely says: "I have not been able to make the next step—namely, to account by mechanical considerations for these stresses in the dielectric."
This example will be sufficient to show what I mean; I could quote many others. Thus, who would suspect on reading the pages devoted to magnetic rotatory polarisation that there is an identity between optical and magnetic phenomena?
We must not flatter ourselves that we have avoided every contradiction, but we ought to make up our minds. Two contradictory theories, provided that they are kept from overlapping, and that we do not look to find in them the explanation of things, may, in fact, be very useful instruments of research; and perhaps the reading of Maxwell would be less suggestive if he had not opened up to us so many new and divergent ways. But the fundamental idea is masked, as it were. So far is this the case, that in most works that are popularised, this idea is the only point which is left completely untouched. To show the importance of this, I think I ought to explain in what this
