location at a definite moment; the whole constituting a four-dimensional world of space and time. To construct a set of axes of space and time is equivalent to projecting this four-dimensional world into a three-dimensional world of space and a one-dimensional world of time, and this projection may be performed in an infinite number of ways, each of which is distinguished from the others only by characteristics merely arbitrary and accidental.[1]
In order to represent natural phenomena without introducing this contingent element, it would be necessary to abandon the customary three-dimensional system of coordinates, and to operate in four dimensions. Analysis of this kind has been devised, and has been applied to the theory of the aether; but its development belongs to the twentieth century, and consequently falls outside the scope of the present work.
From what has been said, it will be evident that, in the closing years of the nineteenth century, electrical investigation was chiefly concerned with systems in motion. The theory of electrons was, however, applied with success in other directions, and notably to the explanation of a new experimental discovery.
The last recorded observation of Faraday[2] was an attempt to detect changes in the period, or in the state of polarization, of the light emitted by a sodium flame, when the flame was placed in a strong magnetic field. No result was obtained; but the conviction that an effect of this nature remained to be discovered was felt by many of his successors. Tait[3] examined the influence of a magnetic field on the selective absorption of light; impelled thereto, as he explained, by theoretical considerations. For from the phenomenon of magnetic rotation it may be inferred[4] that rays circularly polarized in opposite senses are propagated with different velocities in the magnetized medium; and therefore if only those rays are absorbed which have a
