ence of this pound in the carbonic acid, which is the product of combustion, and from which the original weight of carbon may be recovered. The quantity of matter is measured by its weight, and this weight is unchangeable.
Such is the fact, familiar to every one, and its interpretation, equally familiar. To test the correctness of this interpretation, we may be permitted slightly to vary the method of verifying it. Instead of burning the pound of carbon, let us simply carry it to the summit of a mountain, or remove it to a lower latitude; is its weight still the same? Relatively it is; it will still balance the original counterpoise. But the absolute weight is no longer the same. This appears at once, if we give to the balance another form, taking a pendulum instead of a pair of scales. The pendulum on the mountain or near the equator vibrates more slowly than at the foot of the mountain or near the pole, for the reason that it has become specifically lighter by being farther removed from the centre of the earth's attraction, in conformity to the law that the attractions of bodies vary inversely as the squares of their distances.
It is thus evident that the constancy, upon the observation of which the assertion of the indestructibility of matter is based, is simply the constancy of a relation, and that the ordinary statement of the fact is crude and inadequate. Indeed, while it is true that the weight of a body is a measure of its mass, this is but a single case of the more general fact that the masses of bodies are inversely as the velocities imparted to them by the action of the same force, or, more generally still, inversely as the accelerations produced in them by the same force. In the case of gravity, the forces of attraction are directly proportional to the masses, so that the action of the forces (weight) is the simplest measure of the relation between any two masses as such; but, in any inquiry relating to the validity of the atomic theory, it is necessary to bear in mind that this weight is not the equivalent, or rather presentation, of an absolute substantive entity in one of the bodies (the body weighed), but the mere expression of a relation between two bodies mutually attracting each other. And it is further necessary to remember that this weight may be indefinitely reduced, without any diminution in the mass of the body weighed, by a mere change of its position in reference to the body between which and the body weighed the relation subsists.[1]
- ↑ The thoughtlessness with which it is assumed by some of the most eminent mathematicians and physicists that matter is composed of particles which have an absolute primordial weight persisting in all positions, and under all circumstances, is one of the most remarkable facts in the history of science. To cite but one instance: Prof. Rettenbacher, one of the ablest analysts of his day, in his "Dynamidensystem" (Mannheim, Bassermann, 1857), p. 14, says, "The absolute weight of atoms is unknown"—his meaning being, as is evident from the context and from the whole tenor of his discussion, that our ignorance of this absolute weight is due solely to the practical impossibility of insulating an atom, and of contriving instruments delicate enough to weigh it.
