SPACE 47 



The hypothesis of the ether has had very important conse- 

 quences, for it has enabled us to bring together under law 

 actions in space that would otherwise have remained in- 

 explicable — as, for instance, in the theory of electricity and 

 magnetism. But we must not forget that the assumption 

 of a medium that binds together everything in space is in no 

 way a necessary postulate for the biological theory of space. 

 Local signs may quite well be connected by direction-signs 

 alone, without its being necessary to fill in the gaps with 

 local signs transformed into atoms, which is the purpose 

 served by the etheric medium. 



It is important to establish this, for, in the theory of 

 gravitation, the hypothesis of the connecting medium has 

 completely broken down, and we have got no further than 

 the action of masses at a distance, according to Newton. 



Undoubtedly, physics has succeeded in referring to local 

 signs and direction-signs almost all the spatial actions of 

 matter, since it banished from its calculations (though only 

 with very great difficulty) a quality which in the beginning 

 was regarded as the cause of all material activities, namely, 

 " force." 



Force is primarily nothing but a sensation that is connected 

 with the movements of our muscles. As an inevitable con- 

 clusion, the muscular sensation was exalted into the cause 

 of the movement of our limbs, and then transformed into the 

 cause of all movements whatsoever. 



When we lift an object, we measure our force by the 

 muscular sensation, but we also ascribe to the object an equal 

 and opposite force, which we overcome. 



For a long time, physics worked with the concept of force 

 as the cause of motion and as the cause of the inhibition of 

 motion. Weight, elasticity and hardness were defined as 

 forces. Moreover, there were forces of chemical tension, 

 magnetic and electrical forces. A non-spatial quality was 



