SIDELIGHTS ON RELATIVITY

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and simple, the mechanical interpretations clumsy and contradictory.
Almost imperceptibly the theoretical physicists adapted themselves
to a situation which, from the standpoint of their mechanical
programme, was very depressing. They were particularly influenced
by the electro-dynamical investigations of Heinrich Hertz. For
whereas they previously had required of a conclusive theory that
it should content itself with the fundamental concepts which belong
exclusively to mechanics (e.g. densities, velocities, deformations,
stresses) they gradually accustomed themselves to admitting electric and
magnetic force as fundamental concepts side by side with those of
mechanics, without requiring a mechanical interpretation for them.
Thus the purely mechanical view of nature was gradually abandoned.
But this change led to a fundamental dualism which in the long-run
was insupportable. A way of escape was now sought in the reverse
direction, by reducing the principles of mechanics to those
of electricity, and this especially as confidence in the strict
validity of the equations of Newton's mechanics was shaken by the