LIGHT THE ETHER IN ITSELF 51 



than thirteen years to come from the sun. Such a 

 velocity would have had no suitability in it. Ten times, 

 a hundred times, a hundred thousand times, that velocity 

 would have had none. But it is nearly a million times 

 greater and most suitable. It is transcendently great, 

 and of that greatness which its usefulness in an ordered 

 kosmos demands, of that greatness which the distance it 

 has to travel requires. Its velocity is determined for the 

 work it has to do. The velocity of sound is suitable for 

 it, and that of the advance of the waves of light is suit- 

 able for them. It is measured and adjusted and set at a 

 point where it proves an invaluable factor in the arrange- 

 ments of a universe. And this measure of the velocity 

 depends on the constitution of the ether. Its essential 

 nature has therefore been fixed by mind, so that its 

 motions might advance with the remarkable and fitting 

 rapidity which characterises them. 



Velocity of advance by waves is a wonderful design both 

 for light and sound. Notwithstanding their smallness, 

 the molecules of air when set in motion in a hurricane at 

 the rate of a hundred miles an hour, sweep on with a 

 force that causes great destruction. If Newton's emission 

 theory of light had been true, what must have been the 

 nature of the particles emitted, which, having an onrush 

 not of a hundred, but of hundreds of millions of miles an 

 hour, would yet beat on all things, and not exercise any 

 force that can be felt, but be gentler than the gentlest 

 zephyr? Such particles, if material at all, even if im- 

 measurably smaller than the smallest molecules, proceeding 

 at so enormous a rate, and being in numbers so vast, 

 might have been expected to blow worlds before them. 

 And without mind at the helm, there might as well have 

 been such a roar and rush of particles as the state of 

 things which now exists, rendering calms impossible, and 



