38 COSMOS. 



idea of the subtlety and tenuity of the upper ether does not 

 appear to have resulted from a knowledge that the air on 

 mountains is purer and less charged with the heavy vapours 

 of the earth, or that the density of the strata of air decreases 

 with their increased height. In as far as the elements of 

 the ancients refer less to material differences of bodies, or 

 even to their simple nature (their incapacity of being decom- 

 posed), than to mere conditions of matter, the idea of the upper 

 ether (the fiery air of heaven) has originated in the primary 

 and normal contraries of heavy and light, lower and upper, 

 earth andjire. These extremes are separated by two inter- 

 mediate elementary conditions, of which the one, water, ap- 

 proximates most nearly to the heavy earth, and the other, air, 

 to the lighter element of fire. 18 



Considered as a medium filling the regions of space, the 

 ether of Empedocles presents no other analogies excepting 



and affords additional evidence of the inaptitude of the an- 

 cients for etymological inquiry." Professor Buschmann calls 

 attention to a Sanscrit term, dschtra, ether or the atmosphere, 

 which looks very like the Greek ai6r)p, with which it has been 

 compared by Vans Kennedy, in his Researches into the Origin 

 and Affinity of the principal Languages of Asia and Europe, 1828, 

 p. 279. This word may also be referred to the root (as, asch) 

 to which the Indians attach the signification of shining or 

 beaming. 



18 Aristot. de Ccelo, iv. 1, and 3-4, pp. 308, and 311-312, 

 Bekk. If the Stagirite withholds from ether the character of 

 a fifth element, which indeed is denied by Hitter ( Geschichte 

 der Philosophic, th. iii. s. 259), and by Martin (Etudes sur 

 le Timee de Platon, t. ii. p. 150) ; it is only because, ac- 

 cording to him, ether, as a condition of matter, has no con- 

 trary. (Compare Biese, Philosophic des Aristotiles, bd. xi. 

 s. 66.) Amongst the Pythagoreans, ether, as a fifth element, 

 was represented by the fifth of the regular bodies, the dode- 

 cahedron, composed of twelve pentagons. (Martin, t. ii. 

 pp. 245-250. 



