The history of scientific opinion on the point before us furnishes a striking illustration of the manner in which language reacts on the ideas which it is intended to express, and thus men fall into the habit of talking nonsense without knowing it. The conception of atoms having the property of exerting various forces across a void space seemed to follow as a matter of course from the discovery of the law of gravitation, and from the language in which it is expressed. After Newton a school arose which taught that atoms have the property of _exerting force at a distance_, and that this property must be inherent in the atoms, just as Lucretius taught that hardness and elasticity were original indefeasible properties of the primordial elements, the "semina rerum," or seeds of things. But Newton did not teach this; he stated a fact, but did not devise an hypothesis; he attempted no explanation of the law of gravitation. "The law of gravitation considered as a _result_ is beautifully simple; in a few words it expresses a fact from which most numerous and complex results may be deduced by mere reasoning--results found invariably to agree with the records of observation; but this same law of gravitation looked upon as an axiom or first principle is so astonishingly far removed from all ordinary experience as to be almost incredible. What! every particle in the whole universe is actively attracting _every other particle_ [that is, every particle in the universe with the same force, without any expenditure of force], through void, without the aid of any communication by means of matter, or otherwise--each particle, unchecked by distance, unimpeded by obstacles, throws this miraculous influence to infinite distance without the employment of any means![272] No particle interferes with its neighbor, but all these wonderful influences are co-existent in every point in space! The result is apparent at each particle, but the condition of intermediate space is exactly the same as though no such influence were being transmitted across it! Earth attracts Sirius across space, and yet the space between is as if neither Earth nor Sirius existed! Can these things be? We think not; and Newton himself did not affirm this."[273] On the contrary, he earnestly rejects any such hypothesis. "It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else _which is not material_, operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact, as it must do if gravitation, in the sense of Epicurus, be essential to and inherent in matter.... That gravitation should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance, through a vacuum, without the mediation of any thing else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it.