PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES. Pat 
What of the vast, apparently wasted, energy that must go on, and on, and on, 
through space? Is it lost? Ianswer, No. It abides; it remains in the ether; 
not as light, not as heat radiation, not as electricity, ultimately, but as gravity, 
reduced to the primal condition of energy; chaotic, protatomic vibration of the 
ether. From this primal condition it may again be reorganized into regular 
waves of definite length, and therefore of definite name, as light, or heat radiation, 
or electricity, by traversing atomic and molecular aggregates. Thus do we round 
out one more eycle in this great universe of cycles. 
An astronomical problem of interest is the question of friction in the outer 
ether. Why are not the planets and comets retarded in their courses by friction 
with the ether? Even the tails of comets are not slowed up in their passage about 
the sun. Instead of these bodies being retarded by the ether, our theory discov- 
ers in the ether their very propelling medium. It is the ether impacts which are 
driving the comets toward the sun and the sun toward the comets by the organi- 
zation of waves between them, as between all other bodies, as we have endeavored 
to show. 
By our theory of the cosmos, electricity and gravity are considered as forms of 
energy inhering in the ether vibrations. By this view they become correlated 
with light and radiant heat. Thus we avoid the old, cumbrous and inexplicable 
conception of electricity, which regards it to be a form of fluid matter, imponder- 
able, incompressible, entangled as it were in the ether. We affirm of such a no- 
tion of the ‘‘electric matter’? what we have asserted of a like conception of the 
ether: that it is illogical, and, therefore, impossible. 
Gravity is usually spoken of loosely as a force, and not as a form of energy. 
Force is a tendency to produce or alter motion in matter. The force may be ex- 
erted and measured without the motion actually resulting, because it may be 
balanced by an equal counteracting tendency. We have found by our theory 
that gravity is inherent in the moving protatoms of the ether. It is there by 
virtue of that motion, and is therefore a form of energy, just as heat is present 
in a material mass by reason of the vibration of its molecules, and is therefore a 
form of energy. Motion of matter is essential to all forms of energy. Without 
motion the idea of energy is inconceivable. 
Briefly stated, the conception of the cosmos which I wish to suggest is: The 
material universe is made up of matter in eternal motion. All is matter and mo- 
tion of matter. The masses, as we know them about us, large and small, are made 
up of molecules in motion. These molecules may meet and rebound or swing 
about each other in their movements, but they are never in permanent contact. 
So small are they that their existence cannot be detected as individuals by any 
of our senses, yet their existence is established by the principles of physics. The 
molecules in turn are conceived to be made up of atoms, to satisfy the demands 
of chemistry. And now, I hold that the atoms must be subdivided into prot- 
atoms, to conform to the demands of etherics; that in the motion of these various 
aggregates of matter inheres the energy of the universe—as energy of mass mo- 
tion in the movements of sensible masses; as heat in the motion of molecules; as 
chemism in the motion of atoms; and as light, radiant heat, electricity, magnetism, 
gravity, in the motion of the protatoms of the ether; that the ether itself is 
made up of protatoms, as yet unassembled into atoms, more or less evenly dis- 
tributed, with absolutely void spaces between them; that across these spaces the 
protatoms move unhindered until they collide with other moving protatoms, when 
they rebound with undiminished energy because of their perfect elasticity: that 
the energy of this ultimate individual protatomic vibration is gravity; that this 
protatomic vibration becomes transformed in the atomic, molecular, and mass 
