CHAPTER II.
WHAT IS PROPOSED.
In the following pages I shall endeavor to set forth, in a simple and orderly manner, certain of my own theories of the Great Physical Forces.
In these theories will be comprised the identity of those forces, the intimate and essential nature of sunlight, sun-heat, gravity, sun-spots, winds and sounds, also the intimate nature of the atmosphere.
In treating these subjects my opinions will not be found in accord with those which receive universal assent at the present time, and I may thus unintentionally offend. I shall therefore claim exceeding indulgence.
If I differ from high authority, I have not a thought of detraction. None can venerate the Nestors in science who have enriched its annals, more than I, and though we reverse their judgments, their errors are confessedly our indispensable helps and guides.
The Great Problem.
The problem of the great physical forces has engaged the profoundest attention of mankind from the earliest historic period down to the present time, yet it remains practically unsolved.
Before the Christian era the opinion was entertained that all of the phenomena of nature might be reduced to one principle of explanation; that there was more than a connection between the imponderable agents—more than a relationship even,—that there was an actual identity.