THE THREE ENTITIES. 6 



This law, known as the law of the conservation of mass, 

 states that no particle of matter, however small, may be 

 created or destroyed. All the king's horses and all the 

 king's men cannot destroy a pin's head. We may smash 

 that pin's head, dissolve it in acid, burn it in the electric 

 furnace, employ, in a word, every annihilating agency, and 

 yet that pin's head persists in being. Again, it is as un- 

 creatable as it is indestructible. In other words, we cannot 

 create something out of nothing. The material must be 

 furnished for every existent article. The sum of matter 

 in the universe is x pounds, and, while it may be carried 

 through a myriad forms, when all is said and done, it is 

 just x pounds. 



In the foregoing statements we have used the conceptions 

 of the older science, and, indeed, the current conceptions; 

 but to say that throughout all time we never should be 

 able to destroy or create matter, or to say, indeed, that 

 matter is not, to some extent, being created and destroyed 

 to-day, would be to run the risk of profound error. All we 

 can say, to-day, is that we cannot do it. If creation or 

 annihilation is actually going on, we are mere spectators and 

 stand in no causal relation. That this well may be, and 

 probably is, it must be the duty of our book to disclose in 

 certain succeeding pages. 



ETHER. 



Any discussion of ether leads out upon the highroad to 

 incredulity. A thing must be defined by its properties 

 and the properties of the ether are for the most part nega- 

 tive; so negative, indeed, are they, that when one says 

 boldly that we cannot see ether, hear it, taste it, smell it, ex- 

 haust it, weigh it, or measure it, one feels timid that sane- 

 minded people will meet these negative qualities of our 



