sun, as a luminous body, is nothing more than a great focus of progenic reflection, transferring the thermic irradiations which are produced in the planets by living bodies, especially by animals, into photothermic irradiations or light. We will see in Part II. Chap. VII. that the sun has also some surface of thermic emission, but this is relatively very small. The sun has no proper force of attraction; the changes of interplanetary gravitation we explain by the periodicity of vital activity, especially in vegetables, gravity resulting from the transference of ultra-atmospheric radiations of progene into movements of the mass of our planet. Accordingly the hub of material circulation is the potence of vitality, and not any force of solar radiation, nor any other of mere mechanical character, as gravitation. This is not the opportune place to consider at length the parallel and difference between gravitation and the forms of radiating progenic action; but we will make this distinction clear, in order to avoid confusion and to relieve ourselves from combating in detail most of the arguments which have been advanced against the concept of gravitation as explained by progene (imponderable ether). Gravitation, according to our hypothesis of progene, is a movement precisely opposite to that of radiation: it is a movement in which the resultant forces are approximated or concentrated in the direction of the propagation according to the ratio of the square root of the distance; while in radiations like those of light, the resultant forces, on the contrary, are eccentric, separating in the direction of propagation in the ratio of the second power of the distance. Thus, then, a power of radiation is centrifugal, while gravitation is centripetal; radiation is an efferent action from the centre, and gravitation is the reverse, afferent towards the centre of the sphere in action. In spite of such opposition, the action of gravitation is not a thing absolutely different from radiation; both are direct effects from the movements of the same intermediate agent—progene; their differences are relative, and we have effectively marked as the sole distinctive character between them that they are opposite in their directions, from this alone arising two contrary effects in the interstices of bodies: radiation, which being eccentric or centrifugal, acts as a repulsive force in its molecular transferences; and gravitation, which being on the contrary concentric or centripetal, acts as an attractive force; and from this arises the physiological analogy between the phrases universal attraction and universal gravitation, which we have called atomic gravitation. We do not deem worthy of consideration the objection in regard to interplanetary gravitation made by Arago, who has said there is no reason to doubt that the action of gravity is instantaneous, and that if universal attraction were the result of the impulsion of a fluid, its action must need a definite time in crossing the immense distance which separates the celestial bodies. This criticism is fatal for the hypothesis which considers interstellar progene as of an atomic or absolutely discontinuous constitution, like atomists see gases when they are highly rarefied, but it does not in any manner affect the concept formed by us of interstellar fluid. This point will be further explained in Part II. In fine our hypothesis of progene defends the truth of the organic theory in the primordial cause of phenomena, considering cosmos as an organism, admitting the Vital Power or Creator as the sole abstract or true causal force, rejecting the materialistic idea of considering the atom as active or passive in itself, and maintaining the existence of a universal means of propagation-progene -which is the first matter in effecting the acts of mechanical process, and which is the agent of indirect transferences when they appear to be produced by distant influences. Here we will make no further explanation of progenic changes, because they form the special topics of Progenic Physics in our "Theory of Physics.” PART II. SYNTHESIS OF COSMOS: SYNTHETIC CONCEPT OF BODIES. MATERIAL substance is either ponderable or imponderable; the former is a condensation into diminutive, indivisible, and indeterminable particles called atoms, and the latter is the metafluid called "ether," by the physicists, and which we call progene; this last, in opposition to the indivisible corpuscles or atoms, is distributed into variable parcels. To form a complete idea of cosmos in its general sense we must make an application of the general concept of matter, not only to its two fundamental forms separately, but we must also consider them jointly in the constitution of bodies. This is the aim of Part II., and we shall see that the complexity of bodies is of different degrees forming four syntheses, namely— 1. Inorganic bodies: atomic and progenic matter together forming bodies which are either solids or fluids. 2. Organic bodies: solids and fluids forming together organisms. 3. Planetary bodies: inorganic and organic world |