Charles Frederick Winslow to Faraday   5 November 1858

West Newton. Mass | Nov. 5. 1858

My dear Sir

Your valuable note dated at London April 26th¹ was received & I felt highly flattered by it. Notwithstanding your conclusions are not understood nor appreciated by astronomers & mathematicians - & because my doctrine of cosmic repulsion has been treated more contemptuously than by mere coldness by several opinionated mathematicians here, who could not see how cosmic repulsion could exist without destroying the force of gravitation, I value your encouraging words very highly.

The subjects of researches such as yours & mine, are very abstruse for common thinkers, & especially to astronomers educated strictly in the Newtonian faith do they seem like unnecessary innovations. These latter as teachers, think but little, & communicate to others what they were severaly taught: To think anything else would be heresy. They never think how rejoiced Newton would have been to be surrounded by such light & accumulated physical knowledge as we possess in these days. Nor what progress he would himself make on his own discoveries. Little by little however the world will wake up, & even astronomers like Arago in his last days will question the universe for the other great secret which has been so long hidden beneath the glare of the sublime Newtonian discovery.

The recent comet² will greatly enlarge our knowledge of the forces at work within cosmic masses. Seen through the great equatorial telescope at Cambridge, as related to me by the Elder & younger Bond³, the translucent sphere was in a violent state of agitation, throwing up constant disruptions from its central parts toward the sun & these luminous outbreaks were then swept off behind the nucleus, that is in lines away from the sun as if some repulsive force proceeded from the sun which seized upon them & swept them off in rapid currents into space to produce luminous appendages. The elder Bond even assured me that it seemed as if some other force besides that of gravitation did exist in space & that it seemed to proceed from the sun. But he was greatly perplexed for an explanation of the phenomena, & said astronomers were very tender about admitting any other force than gravitation. I am truly glad, my dear Mr Faraday, that that comet, so beautiful, so wonderful, so full of tidings from infinite space & the hand of God, so full & overflowing with the secret forces which abide in the atoms of all cosmical spheres, should appear in our days & gladden our eyes & strengthen our hearts with the prospect of the increasing physical knowledge which must the sooner, open upon the world.

About the time I received you[r] letter I received one also from M. Alexis Perr[e]y⁴ of Dijon whose investigations on lunar agency in producing earthquakes became known to me some time after I published my views in 1853, on Solar causation of the same phenomena⁵.- The letters from both of you were read with great interest by a number of my friends who urged me by all means to have them published as an honor to their authors, as a means of advancing science, & as due to myself inasmuch as my views had been publicly ridiculed by two prominent & leading mathematicians in this country. I hesitated a long time, but an eminent scientific friend & prominent gentleman in Boston urged me so strongly upon the point that I consented to place copies of both the letters at his disposal - that is the philosophical portions of them. Now, my dear Sir, what do you think - This friend took them to the Boston Courier, a newspaper conducted with some ability, one of whose editors is a Professor at Cambridge, & the organ of the Cambridge party or school or influence whatever it may be called.- They were kept 3 weeks & then my friend had some difficulty to get them back & offered to pay for their insertion. But they would not publish them at any price, even as advertisements. I was surprized at this last, but not surprized that they were unwilling to publish at mere request; for in my controversy with Prof. Pierce⁶ last year on “The Sun & Continents”, The Courier espoused his cause as he was the pride of Cambridge. It was however the only journal in Boston, or the United States who did take his part, & I saw the Courier was still in his interest or under his advisement or control.- The editor of the Boston Advertizer however very gladly availed himself of the opportunity to publish them⁷ as he esteemed them too valuable & of too much public & scientific importance to be longer suppressed.- I can only hope, the publication of your note will not meet your disapproval.- The next day after their publication, the Courier appeared with a short notice of “a new step in Cometology”, announcing that “Prof. Pierce of Cambridge had at length” discovered or “accomplished” the theory of the Curvature of the comets tail “& had not “abstracted” the idea of it “in form nor substance from any Winslow, Warner⁸, Peter’s⁹, or Bond”. I smiled & wondered what the discovery was. Yesterday morning the Courier announced the Discovery itself - & it is no less a novelty than that the tail is the result of repulsion whose force is about three & one third times as great as that of gravitation!-

In your note you said you “should be very glad to find some effect of gravity that might be considered complimentary to the variation of that force by the change of distance” - As I view this department of nature it seems to me all magnetic force & its congeners or convertabilities, are secondary powers arising from disturbance of equilibrium in the two primal forces of attraction & repulsion at work among atoms.- It is a question with me now, the solution of which I am earnestly seeking, whether force does not exist & may not, independent of matter - whether it did not originally:- & did not also have existence prior to matter. In my contemplations I can divide forces into strata (so to speak & illustrate thought by physical conditions) - & allowing matter to have affinities for gravitation which after certain accumulation, engenders a capacity for the manifestation of repulsion. I obtain the first class of phenomena - The play between these fundamental forces on atoms brings into existence - or manifestation to our senses - the second class including heat, light, magnetism, electricity.- which also I strongly suspect lie in latent or unappreciated conditions to our senses, outside of matter - the excitation of atoms by the dynamic play of condensation ie gravitation & reaction only creating a capacity to receive forces whose fountains are boundless or rather would be boundless in space if matter was set at liberty from attachment to all force. As nature exists matter, & force, both primal & secondary with all their combinations & complications, are united, their relations only changing to produce all the phenomena of the physical world palpable or conceivable by our profoundest researches.- My idea might be illustrated by conceiving all forces united into a homogeny, like a ray of common light which dissolved by a prism presents a multitude of parts all possessing different functions or powers. Our mental prism may be clear enough one of these days, to dissolve the great secret of nature now hidden in the action & reaction of matter & force. At any rate it is by the study of atoms alone that progress can ever be surely made. However these atoms may accumulate never fear to follow the fundamental force as an increasing magnitude however mighty the mass may become. Gravitation is a unit in an atom - it is only a magnified unit in a world according to the number of atoms it embraces. So with repulsion: and in the mighty play of these accumulated forces we get heat light & magnetism, in proportion to the amount of matter & the activity of the primal forces which produce motion among the atoms.- In planets & comets these are more active the nearer the mass is to the sun & they must vary according to its distance from the sun.-

The earth is full of phenomena the opposite of gravitation. Did it ever occur to you that the growth of any tree is an act the contrary of gravitation & that the repulsion between atoms, which carries it upward, may be a mere conversion of the mundane force of gravitation into another living power - a compound of magnetism & life?- All these things are marvellous & I beg you to consider them.

I am very truly Yours | C.F. Winslow

Prof. M. Faraday | London.