Does Matter Exist? 



gated through it like the circles in water into 

 which a stone is dropped, at the tremendous 

 speed of 186,000 miles per second. But the ether 

 is also viscous like pitch. If on a cake of pitch, 

 perfectly solid in appearance, we place a lead 

 bullet, we find that it sinks little by little, so that 

 after a year's time it has penetrated five or six 

 centimetres into the pitch. Similarly material 

 bodies immersed in the ether can change their 

 place in it, thanks to its viscosity, but at much 

 higher speeds than the ball in the cake of pitch. 

 Thus the earth in its annual movement forces its 

 way through the ether at the rate of thirty kilo- 

 metres per second. 



As a matter of fact all these comparisons are 

 lame ; the ether differs profoundly from matter, 

 and only an infirmity of our nature compels us to 

 borrow our comparisons from this matter, which 

 alone is known to our senses. In reality it is 

 only in the language of mathematics that precise 

 expression can be given to the properties of the 

 ether. This expression has been provided by 

 Maxwell, Hertz and their successors. It sums 

 up our knowledge, still very incomplete, of the 

 nature of the ether. 



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