1044: Dynamic Theory. 



those effects. The chemist has not been able to permanently disinte- 

 grate an atom of any one of the 73 elements that are no doubt common 

 to the whole system. 



But there is no reason to suppose these atomic conditions and prop- 

 ties to be confined to our little stellar system. All magnitudes are com- 

 parative, and our stellar system big as it is, is small compared with the 

 Universe. Outside of our stellar system, and separated from it by dis- 

 tances equal to a million times its diameter, are ether stellar systems, 

 up and down space, in all directions thousands of them. The ether 

 stretches away to all of them ; for otherwise we never could see them ; 

 and there can be no doubt that weight and chemism, atoms and ele- 

 ments go with it, built out of and upon it, as the stratified rocks of the 

 earth's crust have been derived from mother granite. 



How far does the ether extend beyond the most distant nebulous 

 stellar system that our telescopes reveal? Space is infinite. We can- 

 not comprehend infinity, but we can conceive of it, while in this case 

 we cannot conceive of limits. Is ether likewise unlimited? Or has it 

 a border or sort of tough selvedge which binds it all around, and 

 from which are reflected back the waves of the vast web within? 

 Is it here that the eddies of the billows rolled back upon themselves 

 form the gravitation atoms? Or are these the products of the clash of 

 vast waves rolled together in the mid-ocean of ether ? Or may we im- 

 agine the final margin of the ether to be without selvedge or binding, 

 and like the frayed edges of a web, to become worn and snapped off by 

 the undulations of the mass within? Do the particles thus snapped off 

 thereafter constitute independent atoms, and does the force expended in 

 their severance become to them their polar energy of gravitation? 

 Would they thus be drawn to each other across constantly lengthening 

 chords of the spheroidal universe of ether, till finally their aggregated 

 masses would plunge through it in all directions? If the ether is un- 

 limited may not the process of the evolution of the gravitation atoms 

 or atomicules, the creation of "cosmical dust," the erection of new 

 nebular and stellar and solar systems, be still in activity to continue 

 thus forever? Has this process been going on forever in the past? Or 

 did it have a beginning? If it began at a certain time, why did it not 

 begin sooner? Are the collisions and smash-ups that happen between 

 ponderable bodies, such as we see when a meteor strikes the earth, ever 

 great enough to reduce the ponderable bodies to ether? If so might 

 we not conceive the process of making and unmaking of stellar sys- 

 tems to have gone on during all time past, and to continue for all time 

 to come even with a limited area of matter? 



But how came ether to be in existence in the first place, and being in 

 existence, how came it to be in motion? Did it always exist, or was it 



