THE ETHER OF SPACE 341 



ment to demonstrate the excentricity of successively emitted 

 waves ? Did not Michelson and Morley try, with consummate 

 skill and beautiful apparatus ? did they not show that there 

 was no effect to be observed ? 



And we reply, yes truly that is so, we do not contest the fact 

 nor seek to evade the definiteness of their result. But then, we 

 go on to say, FitzGerald and Lorenz with equal definiteness 

 showed that on an electric theory of matter all such effect ought 

 to be null, precisely as observed ; they showed that moving 

 apparatus would be subject to distortion, its length and breadth 

 would not be the same while moving through the ether as they 

 were while stationary — the force of cohesion, if electrical, must 

 be changed by motion — not by relative motion only but by 

 absolute motion through the ether. Since Clerk Maxwell, it is 

 surely admitted that two moving charges repel or attract each 

 other less than they do when stationary ; and hence, even 

 quantitatively, the effect that Michelson and Morley were 

 looking for ought not to be discoverable, unless they could 

 conquer the inevitable distortion of their block of stone. 



Mere subterfuge ! we must suppose our critics to reply, a 

 transparent device for evading a straightforward and simple 

 conclusion. The effect is not detectable, they would continue, 

 simply and solely because it does not exist. It is unscientific or 

 worse to seek to get over a distinct answer of experiment by 

 inventing some ingenious compensatory cause which previously 

 you had not thought of. 



True we had not thought of it before but we might have 

 done ; it is a direct consequence of our theory of matter. And 

 the negative result of the Michelson and Morley experiment, so 

 far from throwing doubt on the existence of an ether, pleases us 

 by confirming our deduction of the drift effect which does occur 

 and would be detected but for the compensating cause ; like- 

 wise by verifying what we now perceive is a genuine though 

 unexpected result of motion — the minute alteration of shape, the 

 pure shear, which moving matter undergoes — a result which we 

 should have been able to detect and verify in no other way. 



" Are you then satisfied," they might ask, " to base two 

 deductions on one experiment with a clear negative result, on 

 the ground that both are reasonable and necessary and that the 

 effect of either alone would have been perceived although the 

 effect of the two together is demonstrably null and is proved to 



