But why should this reciprocity exist? What is the meaning of absorption? what is the meaning of radiation? When you cast a stone into still water, rings of waves surround the place where it falls; motion is radiated on all sides from the centre of disturbance. When a hammer strikes a bell, the latter vibrates; and sound, which is nothing more than an undulatory motion of the air, is radiated in all directions. Modern philosophy reduces light and heat to the same mechanical category. A luminous body is one with its atoms in a state of vibration; a hot body is one with its atoms also vibrating, but at a rate which is incompetent to excite the sense of vision; and, as a sounding body has the air around it, through which it propagates its vibrations, so also the luminous or heated body has a medium, called aether, which accepts its motions and carries them forward with inconceivable velocity. Radiation, then, as regards both light and heat, is the transference of motion from the vibrating body to the aether in which it swings: and, as in the case of sound, the motion imparted to the air is soon transferred to surrounding objects, against which the aerial undulations strike, the sound being, in technical language, absorbed; so also with regard to light and heat, absorption consists in the transference of motion from the agitated aether to the molecules of the absorbing body. The simple atoms are found to be bad radiators; the compound atoms good ones: and the higher the degree of complexity in the atomic grouping, the more potent, as a general rule, is the radiation and absorption. Let us get definite ideas here, however gross, and purify them afterwards by the process of abstraction. Imagine our simple atoms swinging like single spheres in the aether; they cannot create the swell which a group of them united to form a system can produce. An oar runs freely edgeways through the water, and imparts far less of its motion to the water than when its broad flat side is brought to bear upon it. In our present language the oar, broad side vertical, is a good radiator; broad side horizontal, it is a bad radiator. Conversely the waves of water, impinging upon the flat face of the oar-blade, will impart a greater amount of motion to it than when impinging upon the edge. In the position in which the oar radiates well, it also absorbs well. Simple atoms glide through the aether without much resistance; compound ones encounter resistance, and hence yield up more speedily their motion to the aether. Mix oxygen and nitrogen mechanically, they absorb and radiate a certain amount of heat. Cause these gases to combine chemically and form nitrous oxide, both the absorption and radiation are thereby augmented hundreds of times!