Structure of the Universe 403 



be started deeper down. The ore on one level "will only last a cer- 

 tain time, and if we would keep enlarging the mine the explorations 

 must go to deeper levels. In like manner in the history of science 

 we find that science reaches a certain stage under the domination of 

 some reigning method or idea, and that it is then unable to go any 

 further until a new discovery is made, or until the mine of knowl- 

 edge is tapped, as it v ere at a deeper level. This gives science a 

 new impulse and new ideas and knowledge flow from such discovery. 

 Such for instance were the great discoveries of Copernicus and New- 

 ton, and I think that Reynolds' theory of the cause of gravitation 

 is destined to be another epoch making discovery. It is an inversion 

 of ideas hitherto conceived as to matter and mass, from which will 

 probably flow a series of v/onderful discoveries as to the true mechan- 

 ism of the universe in which we live. 



Reynolds' explanation of the motion of matter through space is 

 in itself a new and most wonderful conception. It takes place by 

 propagation. Propagation means generation, renewal. The motion 

 of the earth through space is not a 'bodily translation, but the move- 

 ment of a form or wave having the shape of the earth, by means of 

 an exchange of momentum between the cosmic grains on opposite sides 

 of the surface, just as the gap between the two rows of balls in the 

 experiment which you saw, moves forward as the balls pass across 

 from one surface to the opposite one. The gap between the two rows 

 of balls is the "negative inequality," which we call "matter." Rey- 

 nolds puts it: "Thus it is that the inequality in density, the integral 

 of which is the volume of the grains, the replacement of which 

 would re^Dtore the uniformity of the medium, obliterating the 

 inequality, constitutes the mass propagated. And as this, for a nega- 

 tive centre is negative, its propagation requires the displacement of 

 an equivalent positive mass in the opposite direction to that of propa- 

 gation of the negative inequality." This is the supreme paradox of 

 the whole theory, and leads to an inversion of ideas as to the structure 

 of the universe. It would strike us as chimerical were it not estab- 

 lished by sound mathematical and dynamical investigation. Remem- 

 ber also the statement of Sir J. J. Thomson, arrived at from another 

 line of investigation that "all mass is mass of the ether, all momentum, 

 momentum of the ether, and all kinetic energy kinetic energy of the 

 ether. This view, it should be said, requires the density of the ether 

 to be immensely greater than that of any known substance." 



From these new views and conceptions I look for great develop- 

 ments in philosophy in the near future. 



Notices of the Theory. 



In regard to the scientific world, the theory has scarcely as yet 

 entered the stage of criticism. There have been some notices of the 

 theory in England. The "Sub-mechanics of the Universe" was pub- 

 lished in 1903. Whetham in his "Recent Development of Physical 

 Science" published recently, referring to Reynolds' work, says: "The 

 mathematical analysis by which these deductions are established is 

 attempt will stand the criticisms that will be directed against it; but 

 very complex and difficult, and it is yet too soon to say if this bold 



