“Casting now a glance backwards, we see that by the experiments above sketched the propagation in time of a supposed action at a distance is for the first time proved. This fact forms the philosophic result of the experiments, and indeed, in a certain sense, the most important result. The proof includes a recognition of the fact that the electric forces can disentangle themselves from material bodies, and can continue to subsist as conditions or changes in the state of space. The details of the experiments further prove that the particular manner in which the electric force is propagated exhibits the closest analogy[70] with the propagation of light; indeed, that it corresponds almost completely to it. The hypothesis that light is an electrical phenomenon is thus made highly probable. To give a strict proof of this hypothesis would logically require experiments upon light itself. “What we here indicate as having been accomplished by the experiments is accomplished independently of the correctness of particular theories. Nevertheless, there is an obvious connection between the experiments and the theory in connection with which they were really undertaken. Since the year 1861 science has been in possession of a theory which Maxwell constructed upon Faraday’s views, and which we therefore call the Faraday-Maxwell theory. This theory affirms the possibility of the class of phenomena here discovered just as positively as the remaining electrical theories are compelled to deny it. From the outset Maxwell’s theory excelled all others in elegance and in the abundance of the relations between the various phenomena which it included. “The probability of this theory, and therefore the number of its adherents, increased from year to year. But as long as Maxwell’s theory depended solely upon the probability of its results, and not on the certainty of its hypotheses, it could not completely displace the theories which were opposed to it. “The fundamental hypotheses of Maxwell’s theory contradicted the usual views, and did not rest upon the evidence of decisive experiments. In this connection we can best characterise the object and the result of our experiments by saying: The object of these experiments was to test the fundamental hypotheses of the Faraday-Maxwell theory, and the result of the experiments is to confirm the fundamental hypotheses of the theory.”