as a general rule, is also divided into a reflected and a transmitted portion.  The particles once reflected are not always reflected, nor are the particles once transmitted always transmitted.  Newton saw all this; he knew he had to explain why it is that the self-same particle is at one moment reflected and at the next moment transmitted.  It could only he through some change in the condition of the particle itself.  The self-same particle, he affirmed, was affected by ‘fits’ of easy transmission and reflection.

Sec. 9. Theory of ‘Fits’ applied to Newton’s Rings.

If you are willing to follow me in an attempt to reveal the speculative groundwork of this theory of fits, the intellectual discipline will, I think, repay you for the necessary effort of attention.  Newton was chary of stating what he considered to be the cause of the fits, but there can hardly be a doubt that his mind rested on a physical cause.  Nor can there be a doubt that here, as in all attempts at theorising, he was compelled to fall back upon experience for the materials of his theory.  Let us attempt to restore his course of thought and observation.  A magnet would furnish him with the notion of attracted and repelled poles; and he who habitually saw in the visible an image of the invisible would naturally endow his light-particles with such poles.  Turning their attracted poles towards a transparent substance, the particles would be sucked in and transmitted; turning their repelled poles, they would be driven away or reflected.  Thus, by the ascription of poles, the transmission and reflection of the self-same particle at different times might be accounted for.

Consider these rings of Newton as seen in pure red light:  they are alternately bright and dark.  The film of air corresponding to the outermost of them is not thicker than an ordinary soap-bubble, and it becomes thinner on approaching the centre; still Newton, as I have said, measured the thickness corresponding to every ring, and showed the difference of thickness between ring and ring.  Now, mark the result.  For the sake of convenience, let us call the thickness of the film of air corresponding to the first dark ring d; then Newton found the distance corresponding to the second dark ring 2 d; the thickness corresponding to the third dark ring 3 d; the thickness corresponding to the tenth dark ring 10 d, and so on.  Surely there must be some hidden meaning in this little distance, d, which turns up so constantly?  One can imagine the intense interest with which Newton pondered its meaning.  Observe the probable outcome of his thought.  He had endowed his light-particles with poles, but now he is forced to introduce the notion of periodic recurrence.  Here his power of transfer from the sensible to the subsensible would render it easy for him to suppose the light-particles animated, not only with a motion of translation, but also with a