n8 Presidential Address 



Page 34 



' Matter is essentially that which moves. We are 

 acquainted with no portion of matter which is really 

 stationary. A statement of the speed and direction of 

 motion can be included among the elements of description 

 of any piece of matter. Ether in the same sense cannot be 

 moved, but it can be strained. It is strained when a bow 

 is bent; and it is also strained, though less obviously, when 

 a weight is raised, or when gunpowder is kept without the 

 release afforded by pulling the trigger. In all these cases 

 particles of matter are put into constrained positions with 

 reference to each other, and the seat of the static energy 

 involved is the ether between and near the particles. 

 When it is released kinetic energy results, for the matter is 

 then more or less violently moved. Kinetic energy belongs 

 to matter, Static or Potential to ether. The arguments 

 for high density of ether, and for the extraordinarily filmy 

 or gossamer-like character of matter compared to it, will 

 be found in my small book, The Ether of Space, (Harper 

 & Bros.). 



Page 37 



Part of the basis of Planck's theory of quanta, or indivisi- 

 ble units of energy, is given, in rudimentary fashion, in 

 the note to Page 26. 



Page 41 



The Brownian movement, long known as a constant 

 fidget of minute particles suspended in liquid and viewed 

 through a high-power microscope, has acquired great 

 interest of late by the discovery that all the laws of gases 

 apply to those visible material aggregates, consisting as they 

 must of billions of atoms, as well as to the almost infinitely 

 smaller and quite invisible things, the atoms and molecules 



