HOW PHENOMENA ARE INTERPRETED. 8 1 



tery of the ether ; and if matter be, as I have hinted, a particular 

 form of energy in the ether, then what can happen in matter 

 depends upon the wholly unknown possibilities of the ether. 

 Again, if the phenomena exhibited by matter lead to the con- 

 viction that the latter is made up of the forrner, then logic leads 

 to the necessary assumption that the ether must have existed 

 before matter, which is made out of it, and so far such a con- 

 clusion finds favor with all philosophers. In physical philoso- 

 phy a phenomenon is said to be explained or interpreted when 

 its antecedents are all pointed out. When such antecedents 

 are unknown we strive to discover the missing factor, always 

 assuming that whatever it may be it has some necessary relation 

 to the phenomenon which, when discovered, may be made 

 intelligible in the same terms the rest have been. Note how 

 this applies to the explanation of the existence of matter itself. 

 A uniform, homogeneous, frictionless, gravitationless medium, 

 such as the ether appears to be, could not itself organize a 

 single vortex ring possessing energy, which should be the in- 

 destructible thing an atom appears tq be. Mechanical actions 

 such as belong to our scientific scheme of knowledge are abso- 

 lutely powerless in a frictionless medium, and in order to pro- 

 duce such a thing as an atom there is needed an activity 

 altogether unrelated to any kind we know or which has ever 

 been the subject of consideration in physical science. Creation 

 is the only word which is suitable for the action, and there is 

 implied behind the ether some other factor not necessarily related 

 to it in the sense in which ether is related to matter. So that 

 behind both matter and ether there is a something which must 

 be postulated as the initiative of all we see and know, capable 

 of acting upon the ether, but without mechanical compulsion. 

 Therefore choice, a mental attribute, has a locus here, and mind 

 appears to be a necessary assumption, as necessary for a proper 

 antecedent as is ether pressure for the phenomena of attraction 

 or an artificer for making a house, and this, too, wherever there 

 is an atom, whether here upon the earth or in the most distant 

 star, everywhere, omnipresent mind. Choice implies con- 

 sciousness and intelligence, and so physical interpretations of 

 the phenomena always before our eyes lead us back to a super- 



