WCP2829

[1]¹

HOTEL DU PARC

ET GRAND HOTEL

VICHY

25 July 1903

Dear D^r. Wallace

According to promise I have read the pamphlet on gravity which you sent me, but I regret to say without the least enlightenment.

The author seems satisfied with vague platitudes about a kind of cohesion which binds matter together, as the parts of a body are bound. But that helps us not at all. Cohesion requires explanation just as much as gravity does.

To say that stones removed from the earth spring back as if they are joined [2]² by elastic threads is merely to state (inaccurately) a fact: it is not to give an explanation in the least.

The author does not seem to understand what an explanation really is & he is probably too ignorant of science & mathematics to be able to comprehend the lines on which an explanation may hereafter be possible & towards which people are now working.

It must depend on the structure & properties of the ether, & on the nature of electrons or fundamental material particles; but to state the problem, even with all [3] the tautology & waste eloquence which the author employs, is not to help us towards an explanation in the slightest degree.

There are too many people who take Newton’s³ name in vain, who do not in the least understand his real magnitud[e] nor the real nature of his discoveries. They bask in the superficial.

Believe me | Yours very truly | Oliver Lodge⁴ [signature]

[4] I return the paper by same post.