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III.—The Electro-Magnetic Theory of Light

We explain electro-magnetic phenomena by means of mechanical action transmitted from one body to another by means of a medium occupying the space between them. The undulatory theory of light also assumes the existence of a medium. We have to show that the properties of the electro-magnetic medium are identical with those of the luminiferous medium.

To fill all space with a new medium whenever any new phenomena are to be explained is by no means philosophical, but if the study of two different branches of science has independently suggested the idea of a medium; and if the properties which must be attributed to the medium in order to account for electro-magnetic phenomena are of the same kind as those which we attribute to the luminiferous medium in order to account for the phenomena of light, the evidence for the physical existence of the medium is considerably strengthened.

According to the theory of emission, the transmission of light energy is effected by the actual transference of light-corpuscles from the luminous to the illuminated body. According to the theory of undulation there is a material medium which fills the space between the two bodies, and it is by the action of contiguous parts of this medium that the energy is passed on, from one portion to the next, till it reaches the illuminated body. The luminiferous medium is therefore, during the passage of light through it, a receptacle of energy. This energy is supposed to be partly potential and partly kinetic, and our theory agrees with the undulatory theory in assuming the existence of a medium capable of becoming a receptacle for two forms of energy.

Now, the properties of bodies are capable of quantitative measurement. We therefore obtain the numerical value of some property of the medium—such as the velocity with which a disturbance is propagated in it, which can be calculated from experiments, and also observed directly in the case of light. If it be found that the velocity of propagation of electro-magnetic disturbance is the same as the velocity of light, we have strong reasons for believing that light is an electro-magnetic phenomenon.

It is, in fact, found that the velocity of light and the velocity of propagation of electro-magnetic disturbance are quantities of the same order of magnitude. Neither of them can be said to have been determined accurately enough to say that one is greater than the other. In the meantime, our theory asserts that the quantities are equal, and assigns a physical reason for this equality, and it is not contradicted by the comparison of the results, such as they are.

Lorenz has deduced from Kirchoff's equations of electric currents a new set of equations, indicating that the distribution of force in the electro-magnetic field may be considered as arising from the mutual action of contiguous elements, and that waves, consisting of transverse electric currents, may be propagated, with a velocity comparable with that of light, in non-conducting media. These conclusions are similar to my own, though obtained by an entirely different method.

The most important step in establishing a relation between electric and magnetic phenomena and those of light must be the discovery of some instance in which one set of phenomena is affected by the other. Faraday succeeded in establishing such a relation, and the experiments by which he did so are described in the nineteen series of his "Experimental Researches." Suffice it to state here that he showed that in the case of aray of plane-polarised light the effect of the magnetic force is to turn the plane of polarisation round the direction of the ray as an axis, through a certain angle.

The action of magnetism on polarised light leads to the conclusion that in a medium under the action of a magnetic force, something belonging to the same mathematical class as an angular velocity, whose axis is in the direction of the magnetic force, forms part of the phenomenon. This angular velocity cannot be any portion of the medium of sensible dimensions rotating as a whole. We must, therefore, conceive the rotation to be that of very small portions of the medium, each rotating on its own axis.

This is the hypothesis of molecular vortices. The displacements of the medium during the propagation of light will produce a disturbance of the vortices, and the vortices, when so disturbed, may react on the medium so as to affect the propagation of the ray. The theory proposed is of a provisional kind, resting as it does on unproved hypotheses relating to the nature of molecular vortices, and the mode in which they are affected by the displacement of the medium.