s of the Indian
people from the time of Megasthenes, who wrote of them in the fourth
century B.C.

Sir William Jones, in a paper on the philosophy of the Asiatics, pointed
out that "the old philosophers of Europe had some idea of centripetal
force, and a principle of universal gravitation," and affirms that "much
of the theology and philosophy of our immortal Newton may be found in
the Vedas."

"That _most subtle spirit_ which he suspected to pervade natural bodies,
and lying concealed in them, to cause attraction and repulsion, the
emission, reflection and refraction of light, electricity, calefaction,
sensation, and muscular motion, is described by the Hindus as a _fifth
element_, endowed with these very powers; and the Vedas abound with
allusions to a force universally attractive, which they chiefly ascribe
to the sun, thence called 'Aditya, or the attractor,' a name designed by
the mythologists to mean the child of the goddess Aditi. But the most
wonderful passage on the theory of attractions occurs in the charming
allegorical poem of 'Shi'ri'n and Ferhai'd, or the Divine Spirit, and a
human soul disinterestedly pious,' a work which, from the first verse to
the last, is a blaze of religious and poetical fire.

"The whole passage appears to me so curious that I make no apology for
giving you a faithful translation of it:--

"_There is a strong propensity which dances through every atom, and
attracts the minutest particle to some peculiar object; search this
universe from its base to its summit, from fire to air, from water to
earth (the four elements!), from all below the moon to all above the
celestial spheres, and thou wilt not find a corpuscle destitute of that
natural attractability. The very point of the first thread in this
apparently tangled skein is no other than such a principle of
attraction, and all principles beside are void of a real basis: from
such a propensity arises every motion perceived in heavenly or in
terrestrial bodies; it is a disposition to be attracted which taught
hard steel to rush from its place and rivet itself on the magnet; it is
the same disposition which impels the light straw to attach itself
firmly on amber; it is this quality which gives every substance in
nature a tendency towards another, and an inclination forcibly directed
to a determinate point._"

In Sir W. Ainslie's Materia Medica of India the opinion of an old Hindoo
author is given as to the qualifications required