ETHER AND GRAVITY. *J I 



properties of the ether are sufficiently extraordinary. 

 It is an adamantine solid several hundred times 

 more rigid than the most solid bodies, and vibrates 

 at the rate of from 470 to 760 billion times per 

 second. And this intangible solid has no gravity, 

 and thereby lacks the great characteristic of matter.^ 



For gravity has been since Newton's time re- 

 garded as the primary attribute of matter, although 

 its nature and operation is, by Newton's own ad- 

 mission, unthinkable. For it differs radically from 

 all the other forces in the physical universe in that 

 it does not require time for its transmission. Sound 

 travels at the rate of 1,100 feet per second, and light 

 at the rate of 186,000 miles; but the changes in 

 gravitative attraction seem to be instantaneous. So 

 either Time or Space ^ do not seem to exist for it, 

 and it also may be said to involve Action at a dis- 

 tance. 



Such action our scientists persist in regarding as 

 impossible, although their own physics evidently 

 require it, and although there Is no real reason why 

 it should be more unthinkable than anything else. 

 The objection to it seems nothing but the survival 

 of the primitive prejudice that all action must be 

 like a band of savages in a tug-of-war. If meta- 

 physics had been consulted. It would have been 

 obvious that no special medium was required to 



1 If the ether gravitated, it would be attracted towards the 

 larger aggregates of matter, and hence be denser in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the stars than in interstellar space ; but if its density 

 varied, it would not propagate light in straight lines. 



2 If it can traverse any distance instantaneously ; for the fact 

 that it varies inversely as the square of the distance does not 

 prove that gravity recognises the prior existence of space. The 

 distances between bodies may be only the phenomenal expres- 

 sion of their metaphysical attractions and repulsions. 



