Thomas K. Simpson examines Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism with the tools of literary criticism, exploring questions of meaning, structure, and style. Maxwell was very concerned with the relation of meaning to form of presentation, as Simpson brought out in his guide to three Maxwell papers, Maxwell on the Electromagnetic Field: A Guided Study, published by Rutgers University Press. Figures of Thought is the definitive argument against Hertz's claim that Maxwell's theory is Maxwell's system of equations.