If we study the conditions under which a wave excited by an electron’s variations in speed can be transmitted, they again bring us face to face, and generally, with the results pointed out by the ordinary electromagnetic theory.  Certain peculiarities, however, are not absolutely the same.  Thus the theory of Lorentz, as well as that of Maxwell, leads us to foresee that if an insulating mass be caused to move in a magnetic field normally to its lines of force, a displacement will be produced in this mass analogous to that of which Faraday and Maxwell admitted the existence in the dielectric of a charged condenser.  But M.H.  Poincare has pointed out that, according as we adopt one or other of these authors’ points of view, so the value of the displacement differs.  This remark is very important, for it may lead to an experiment which would enable us to make a definite choice between the two theories.

To obtain the displacement estimated according to Lorentz, we must multiply the displacement calculated according to Hertz by a factor representing the relation between the difference of the specific inductive capacities of the dielectric and of a vacuum, and the first of these powers.  If therefore we take as dielectric the air of which the specific inductive capacity is perceptibly the same as that of a vacuum, the displacement, according to the idea of Lorentz, will be null; while, on the contrary, according to Hertz, it will have a finite value.  M. Blondlot has made the experiment.  He sent a current of air into a condenser placed in a magnetic field, and was never able to notice the slightest trace of electrification.  No displacement, therefore, is effected in the dielectric.  The experiment being a negative one, is evidently less convincing than one giving a positive result, but it furnishes a very powerful argument in favour of the theory of Lorentz.

This theory, therefore, appears very seductive, yet it still raises objections on the part of those who oppose to it the principles of ordinary mechanics.  If we consider, for instance, a radiation emitted by an electron belonging to one material body, but absorbed by another electron in another body, we perceive immediately that, the propagation not being instantaneous, there can be no compensation between the action and the reaction, which are not simultaneous; and the principle of Newton thus seems to be attacked.  In order to preserve its integrity, it has to be admitted that the movements in the two material substances are compensated by that of the ether which separates these substances; but this conception, although in tolerable agreement with the hypothesis that the ether and matter are not of different essence, involves, on a closer examination, suppositions hardly satisfactory as to the nature of movements in the ether.

For a long time physicists have admitted that the ether as a whole must be considered as being immovable and capable of serving, so to speak, as a support for the axes of Galileo, in relation to which axes the principle of inertia is applicable,—­or better still, as M. Painleve has shown, they alone allow us to render obedience to the principle of causality.