THE ETHER iii 



yet it is imponderable, and it permits the planets 

 to pass through it without friction. Personally, 

 we must admit such a medium is beyond the 

 wildest stretch of our imagination ; and when Sir 

 Oliver Lodge mentions that the intrinsic energy 

 of the constitution of the ether is so incredibly, 

 portentously great that every cubic millimetre of 

 space possesses what, if it were matter, would be 

 a mass of a thousand tons, and energy equivalent 

 to the output of a million-horse-power station for 

 forty million years, we are not inclined to contest 

 his calculations. 



We can well believe that the atomic miniature 

 solar systems are only strains in this marvellous 

 medium ; and even, as Sir Oliver Lodge and Clerk- 

 Maxwell suggest, that it may " constitute the 

 organism of beings exercising functions of life as 

 high or higher than ours are at present." 



