the rich physical suggestiveness of Maxwell's; the value of his memoir lies chiefly in the introduction of the retarded potentials. It may be remarked in passing that Lorenz's retarded potentials are not identical with Maxwell's scalar and vector potentials; for Lorenz's a is not a circuital vector, and Lorenz's φ is not, like Maxwell's, the electrostatic potential, but depends on the positions occupied by the charges at certain previous instants.
For some years no progress was made either with Maxwell's theory or with Lorenz's. Meanwhile, Maxwell had in 1865 resigned his chair at King's College, and had retired to his estate in Dumfricsshire, where he occupied himself in writing a connected account of electrical theory. In 1871 he returned to Cambridge as Professor of Experimental Physics; and two years later published his Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism.
In this celebrated work is comprehended almost every branch of electric and magnetic theory; but the intention of the writer was to discuss the whole as far as possible from a single point of view, namely, that of Faraday; so that little or no account was given of the hypotheses which had been propounded in the two preceding decades by the great German electricians. So far as Maxwell's purpose was to disseminate the ideas of Faraday, it was undoubtedly fulfilled; but the Treatise was less successful when considered as the exposition of its author's own views. The doctrines peculiar to Maxwell—the existence of displacement-currents, and of electromagnetic vibrations identical with light—were not introduced in the first volume, or in the first half of the second volume; and the account which was given of them was scarcely more complete, and was perhaps less attractive, than that which had been furnished in the original memoirs.
Some matters were, however, discussed more fully in the Treatise than in Maxwell's previous writings, and among these was the question of stress in the electromagnetic field.
It will be remembered[1] that Faraday, when studying the
- ↑ Cf. p. 209.
