292 MODERN SCIENCE READER 



ful if a piece of matter ever touches another piece, any 

 more than a comet touches the sun when it appears to 

 rebound from it ; but the atoms are connected, as the plan- 

 ets, the comets and the sun are connected, by a continuous 

 plenum without break or discontinuity of any kind. Mat- 

 ter acts on matter solely through the ether. But whether 

 matter is a thing utterly distinct and separate from the 

 ether, or whether it is a specifically modified portion of it 

 modified in such a way as to be susceptible of locomotion, 

 and yet continuous with all the rest of the ether which 

 can be said to extend everywhere, far beyond the bounds of 

 the modified and tangible portion called matter are ques- 

 tions demanding, and I may say in process of receiving, 

 answers. 



Every such answer involves some view of the universal, 

 and possibly infinite, uniform omnipresent connecting 

 medium, the ether of space. 



Let us now recall the chief lines of evidence on which 

 the existence of such a medium is believed in, and our 

 knowledge of it is based. First of all, Newton recognized 

 the need of a medium for explaining gravitation. In his 

 "Optical Queries," he shows that if the pressure of this 

 medium is less in the neighborhood of material bodies than 

 at great distances from them, those bodies will be driven 

 toward each other; and that if the diminution of pressure 

 is inversely as the distance from the dense body, the law 

 will be that of gravitation. 



All that is required, therefore, to explain gravity is a 

 diminution of pressure, or increase of tension, caused by 

 the formation of a matter unit that is to say, of an electron 

 or corpuscle; and although we do not yet know what an 

 electron is whether it be a strain center, or what kind of 

 singularity it is in the ether there is no difficulty in sup- 

 posing that a slight, almost infinitesimal, strain or afc 

 tempted rarefaction should have been produced in the 

 ether whenever an electron came into being; to be relaxed 

 again only on its resolution and destruction. Strictly 



