Energy and Ether. 1023 



Some thirty years ago, Prof. Tyndall suggested that there is a condensed ether which 

 surrounds the atoms, and that it may be the " vehicle of electric currents." Prof. Cooke 

 also believes in the condensed atmosphere of ether surrounding individual molecules of 

 ponderable matter. It is said that Faraday was the first who adopted the idea that elec- 

 tricity is the motion or tension of ether contained in or attached to solid or ponderable 

 bodies. 



Ether and Sound. In treating of sound in chapter 39, I have fol- 

 lowed the account of it usually given by physicists in which no reckon- 

 ing is made for any part which may be played by the ether. It has 

 been observed in a great many cases that a certain rate of the vibration 

 of ponderable elastic substances accompanies each pitch of sound, and 

 a table of these rates is given in chapter 39. It has been shown that 

 the serial vibrations are conveyed to the ear drum and cause it to vibrate 

 and to set the hammer and other bones in motion, which in turn com- 

 municate the jar to the lymph inside the canals and cochlea, and to the 

 hairs and otoliths. All this motion of ponderable matter goes along 

 from the sounding body to the very terminal fibers of the auditory 

 nerve. But there it appears to stop; and the motion which goes on 

 from there in to the brain is different. It is now a nerve current which 

 is beyond doubt a mode of polar, or electrical movement, being to the 

 nerve fiber what the galvanic current is to the conducting wire. Now 

 this is not essentially a motion of ponderable matter, but of the more 

 or less condensed fluid ether, contained in the conducting nerve fiber. 

 Now let us inquire how this motion of the ponderable matter upon its 

 termination as such in the ear, is succeeded by motion in the nervous 

 ether. It is conceded by all, that the interstitial spaces of all ponder- 

 able bodies are permeated by the ether. Now when the elastic air is 

 vibrating forth and back under an impulse from a sonorous body, I sup- 

 pose the enclosed ether partakes of its motion, and in the mutual em- 

 brace with the heavy body, it is urged in all directions, and among 

 others towards the ear. But it, like the heavy body, is elastic and 

 mobile, and when the pulsations of both have reached the crista acustica, 

 and those of the ponderable body are quenched in heat, supposing that 

 to be their destin} 7 , those of the ether, end in setting up the current in 

 the fluid contained in the nerve. It is like the conversion of the tidal 

 swell of the sea into the rushing flow of the tidal wave up the Bay of 

 Fundy, or some other estuary. According to this hypothesis then, the 

 jostle or pulsatory movement of the ether, the condensed ether sur- 

 rounding the molecules and contained in the interstices of still more 

 condensed ponderable matter, is the immediate antecedent cause of the 

 current in the auditory nerve. But yet this jostle or pulsation of ether 

 is accompanied up to the very entrance to the nerve by a like jostle or 

 pulsation of heavy substances, the air, the ear drum, the bones, the 

 f enestra ovalis, and the lymph. We seem bound to conclude that this par- 

 ticular sort of motion of ether depends on its affiliation or alliance with 



