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object could exist where that ether exists, for it could not be 

 divided to make room for the object. Again: The physical 

 phenomena of light is explained by the undulatory theory, that 

 &quot;all bodies, as well as the celestial spaces, are filled by an 

 extremely subtile elastic medium, which is called the luminiferous 

 ether. The luminosity of a body is due to an infinitely rapid 

 vibratory motion of its molecules, which, when communicated 

 to the ether, is propagated in all directions in the form of 

 spherical waves, and this vibratory motion, being thus trans 

 mitted to the retina, calls the sensation of vision.&quot; This whole 

 theory is also an evidence that their hypothetical ether is divis 

 ible, composed of atoms, for, were it indivisible, no vibratory 

 motion can be thinkable in it, and no luminosity can ap 

 pear in such a homogenous mass. The ether, therefore, must 

 be divisible, composed of small particles, of etheric atoms with 

 empty spaces between them. Now, those empty spaces, which 

 are not matter and not ether, must be nihility, and as a 

 consequence, that the universal space is nothing else but nihility, 

 and in that nihility swims the etheric atoms from one place of 

 nihility to the other place of nihility, and that nihility brings 

 forth the vibratory motion from one atom to the other in a 

 straight line of nihility, that the basis of our science is nothing 

 else but nihility. Even if we could assent that those empty 

 spaces between the etheric atoms are also a more subtile, a more 

 imponderable, and finally an infinitely thin, infinitely fine and 

 rare fluid that filled the entire universe, as a second kind of 

 &quot;ether,&quot; we should have to assume also that there are infinitely 

 small spaces between those infinitessimal parts of that second 

 kind of etheric atoms which are not the same thing as the parts 

 themselves, and finally, we must come to the above conclusion 

 that the universal space itself is nothing else but nihility. So 

 long as the natural scientists do not recognize an ideal existence 

 beyond force and matter which does not possess the properties 

 of matter, they must recognize the universal space as a nihility, 

 which contradicts the principles of sciences. Moreover, if we 

 could assent to the opinion of our scientists, to their hypothet 

 ical ether, in such a way, that such a subtile fluid, as that ether, 



