88 THE ELECTEIC ELEMENT. 



answer. Though presuming that some single ele- 

 mentary agent is concerned, and this material in its 

 nature, yet can we bring no absolute proof of its being 

 so, or conceive those material properties through which 

 it fulfils the several conditions just stated. What we 

 have before us, then, is purely a question of presump- 

 tion and probability. No other and higher proba- 

 bility can be produced" to refute the opinion that the 

 ether of space, under the conceptions we necessarily 

 attach to it, comes nearer to satisfy these conditions 

 than any other known agent, or any new element 

 which can be imagined for their fulfilment. Though 

 the hypothesis is barren of direct evidence, there are 

 yet glimpses of light in this direction, giving guidance, 

 it may be, towards another of those unities which it is 

 the special object of science to attain. A wrong theory 

 is often the parent of a right one. 



In weighing the one before us it must be explicitly 

 repeated that we are not called upon to vindicate it as 

 applied to all the details of electric phenomena, where 

 every other has failed to compass their interpretation. 

 The problem of the two electricities and their polarities, 

 under the well-recognised fact that one kind of elec- 

 tricity is never present without evolving an equivalent 

 of the other, is perhaps the most arduous of these, 

 departing from all recognised properties of other 

 powers, and still a barrier even to the boldest conjec- 

 ture. But there is nothing here to contradict the view 

 of ether as the agent concerned in these subtle phe- 

 nomena ; nothing certainly to establish the claim of 

 any other element. The difficulty being equal and 



