104 TWO NEW WORLDS 



seven miles per second. This speed, of course, it 

 could never attain, nor a 100,000th part of it, on 

 account of the resistance of the ether ; but it would 

 have a speed very closely approaching that of light, 

 and the vast majority of bodies in our stellar 

 system would be found to possess some such 

 velocity. If, on the other hand, the density varied 

 inversely as the surface, and the mass embraced 

 simply as the radius, then the gravitational poten- 

 tial at the surface would be always the same, being 

 proportional to the mass and inversely proportional 

 to the distance. And, as a consequence, stellar 

 velocities approaching the velocity of light would 

 not prevail in any part of the universe. 



Now, the actual average density of the stellar 

 system by the above figures is 3 x 10~ 22 , as com- 

 pared with water. But we know that the mass 

 of the stellar system is largely concentrated in the 

 Milky Way, and the density of the latter is probably 

 not much smaller than a billionth of that of water. 

 And since the Milky Way must be taken as repre- 

 senting one of the "objects" of the supra-world, 

 it is interesting to note that its density is less than 

 terrestrial densities in about the same proportion 

 as the densities of the " infra- world " are greater. 



