In his attempts to get rid of this perplexity, he was often unconsciously rebelling against the limitations of the intellect itself.

He loved to quote Newton upon this point; over and over again he introduces his memorable words, 'That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum and without the mediation of anything else, by and through which this action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it.

Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether this agent be material or immaterial, I have left to the consideration of my readers.'[1] Faraday does not see the same difficulty in his contiguous particles.
And yet, by transferring the conception from masses to particles, we simply lessen size and distance, but we do not alter the quality of the conception.

Whatever difficulty the mind experiences in conceiving of action at sensible distances, besets it also when it attempts to conceive of action at insensible distances.

Still the investigation of the point whether electric and magnetic effects were wrought out through the intervention of contiguous particles or not, had a physical interest altogether apart from the metaphysical difficulty.