84 THE ELECTRIC ELEMENT. 



electricity, especially under its magnetic conditions, 

 shows it to be an influence spreading widely over the 

 universe, and connecting us physically with the sun at 

 least, if not with other more distant worlds. We need 

 also some element capable of expounding those rela- 

 tions of electricity to matter of every kind, so intimate 

 and constant that no changes of substance whatsoever, 

 chemical or mechanical, can occur without electric 

 manifestations in some form or degree ; and no sub- 

 stance, as far as we can see, but is acted upon in some 

 way or other by the electricity thus evolved. This 

 universality of relation led Faraday to conjecture a 

 direct connexion between the force of gravitation and 

 the electric power. But he failed to find any experi- 

 mental proof justifying this hypothesis. Had such 

 proof been attainable, he of all philosophers would 

 have been the most likely to reach it. 



But failing in this, is there no other known agent 

 to satisfy, in part at least, the conditions required ? Be- 

 fore hurrying to the theory of a new and special power 

 (a bare assumption, complicating yet more the great 

 problem of the elementary forces) we are bound to 

 see whether any of the elements already recognised in 

 the natural world will not equally well interpret the 

 phenomena. And this, I think, may fairly be affirmed 

 of that element, so to term it, which under the provi- 

 sional name of ether we recognise as a necessary 

 existence in the universe around us necessary, be- 

 cause we can in no other way explain the transmission 

 through space of those wonderful wave-motions, of 

 which light and heat are the chief exponents to our 



