their condensation displace the contiguous corpuscles from their equilibrium position; and these in turn produce condensations in the whirlpools next beyond them, so that vibrations are propagated in every direction from the luminous point. It is curious that Bernoulli speaks of these vibrations as longitudinal, and actually contrasts them with those of & stretched cord, which, “when it is slightly displaced from its rectilinear form, and then let go, performs transverse vibrations in a direction at right angles to the direction of the cord." When it is remembered that the objection to longitudinal vibrations, on the score of polarization, had already been clearly stated by Newton, and that Bernoulli's aether closely resembles that which Maxwell invented in 1861-2 for the express purpose of securing transversality of vibration, one feels that perhaps no man ever so narrowly missed a great discovery.
Bernoulli explained refraction by combining these ideas with those of his father. Within the pores of ponderable bodies the whirlpools are compressed, so the centrifugal force must vary in intensity from one medium to another. Thus a corpuscle situated in the interface between two media is acted on by a greater elastic force from one medium than from the other; and by applying the triangle of forces to find the conditions of its equilibrium, the law of Snell and Descartes may be obtained.
Not long after this, the echoes of the old controversy (between Descartes and Format about the law of refraction were awakened[1] by Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (b. 1698, d. 1759).
It will be remembered that according to Descartes the velocity of light is greatest in dense media, while according to Fermat the propagation is swiftest in free aether. The arguments of the corpuscular theory convinced Maupertuis that on this particular point Descartes was in the right; but nevertheless he wished to retain for science the beautiful method by which Fermat had derived his result. This he now proposed
- ↑ Mém. de l'Acad., 1744, p. 417.
