108 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. 



velopment of atoms into matter and into worlds. 

 Whence the simplest cohesive forces? Whence the 

 chemical forces? And more mysterious than all, 

 whence the force of gravitation, infinite, unchangeable, 

 and at the very root of cosmic development? Be- 

 yond these problems again, and quite as essential and 

 insoluble, are the problems of the ether. What is the 

 ether, and what are its relations to matter? Whence 

 the forces that cause the ether to vibrate, and in the 

 various forms of heat, light, or electricity to be the 

 source of all change of form, all molecular motion, all 

 those infinite modifications in the states of matter that 

 alone seem to render possible the development of organ- 

 ized living forms? To all these questions we have no 

 definite answers, and probably never shall have; but we 

 have at least one suggestive speculation, that of the vor- 

 tex-theory of matter. 



According to this theory, the ether is an incom- 

 pressible frictionless fluid, and is the one and only sub- 

 stance of the universe. Matter is but a form of motion 

 of the ether. Atoms are minute vortices, or rapidly re- 

 volving portions of the ether, which, when once started 

 in this frictionless fluid, are eternal and indestructible. 

 A sufficient number (almost infinite) of these vortices, 

 of various dimensions and spinning with various veloci- 

 ties, and having progressive motions in every possible 

 direction like the molecules of a gas, will, it is suggested, 

 group themselves into various aggregations according 

 to similarities of size and motion, will thus produce 

 the elements, which elements will act upon each other 

 in the various modes of chemical combination, and 

 thus will arise all the forms of molecular matter. 



