March 15, 1883] 
NABORLE 
459 
if properly combined can balance them, on a collection of 
material points, if certain internal conditions (always including 
conservation of force-effects and conservation of twirl-effects) of 
the component points’ mutual force and couple-actions on each 
other, which we call certain static relations of the system, are 
fulfilled ; and then we lave forces on such an aggregation either 
giving rise to or holding in check force-couples acting on it. 
But no combination of force-couples, on the other hand, can 
either produce in the system, or resist in it, the action of a 
single force. 5 
Now as a motor-couple and its parts exert time-flow of one 
form of energy, they differ from a force-couple and its parts in 
the same way that these differ from uniform rotation and 
translation ; and as it happens that while rotations can combine 
on a system to produce translation, and not the opposite 
arrangement, and just the reverse of this relation prevails in 
force-couples and their forces, so we may infer that ina system 
of connected points motor-couples would have the opposite 
property to force-couples, and in combination together on the 
system, instead of being produced by, they would either wholly 
or partially produce, a form of resultant of the nature of a motor- 
couple part. This kind of resultant, too, will exert a tendency 
on the system as a whole, with equal and similar intensity at all 
its points. Such a combination of motor-couples on a body, 
therefore, will in general communicate to it by their conjunction, 
not horse-power of undirected actual energy in the same manner 
as a single couple would, but some or no resultant couple- 
part, and some or no resultant couple, just as a set of forces, 
(or rotations) applied to a body may yield a mixed resultant of a 
force and couple (or of a rotation and translation), the couple in 
one case and the translation in the other both taking effect upon 
the body as a whole, since each is quite devoid of any particular 
point of application in the body. This property, which we may 
reasonably assign to motor-couples, of furnishing in combinations 
on a group of material points a dual resultant in general, and the 
condition that they exert singly a time-flow of undirected energy, 
are together the first maxim to be kept in view in discussing 
their effects ; for the double-resultant’s nature, of a congregation 
of motor-couples, in general resembles that of a screw’s motion, 
which is partly translative along and partly rotative round a 
polar axis. Along a given line through the system therefore this 
resultant acts jointly, partly as a wrest, or residual motor-couple, 
and partly as a couple-half, of whose nature and effects no 
attempt, in what precedes, has yet been made to give an 
explanation. 
Although such views as these of matter and motion largely 
invite investigation, it is rather their conformity to observation 
and to such slender mathematical evidence as is derivable from 
the laws of graphic space than any rigid demonstration of their 
validity which has led me to put faith in them. Where time 
and entropy (which linear dilatation is above surmised to be) 
clasp and bind undirected energy in new ties of space, so 
singularly like but yet distinct from the well-known ones which 
regulate the transformations of directed energy, intrusion into the 
mathematical avenues of the problem is almost warded off by the 
obduracy of the new inquiry, and onlyscattered fields of cultivation, 
occurring ever and again along his road, assure the venturesome 
wanderer in the new tract that the course before him still always 
lies in habitable regions. 
It would be presumptuous therefore to insist, until the 
mathematical field has been thoroughly explored, upon a 
preference of one view or hypothesis of motor-actions, as 
decidedly superior to another; but adopting, as Mr. Morris does, 
the opinion that the effects of motor-actions are conserved, and 
adding to this an assumption that in groups of points subjected 
to them the mutual conservation may not be (as it always is among 
the mechanical connecting forces of every piece of ponderable 
matter) perfect and complete in the system by itself, without 
reckoning on to it one other external point, then a material 
simplification of the views unfolded in his paper would, I believe, 
be introduced, by adopting a different hypothesis from that which 
Mr. Morris advances of the nature of the ether as an exceedingly 
attenuated form or ‘fourth state” of gross ‘‘ gravitating” (or 
ponderable) matter. 
If Nature’s course could be retraced to the beginning of time, 
we may suppose in that soufre of antiquity ether to have been dif- 
ferentiated from gross matter in this way, that whereas internal 
conservation of motor-effects suffices to weld a group of material 
points into a resultant yielding system, then, no limits of smallness 
being imposed upon the group, it is allowable to define a point 
(in the language of graphic space) of gross or ponderable 
“‘gravitating”” matter as an originally differentiated mass of 
aérilian points, upon which the dual resultant of the conjoined 
motor-couples on the aérilian points will take effect. A part of 
this resultant is a couple-half, about which we know nothing ; 
and we may reasonably suppose it to be attractive and repulsive 
force acting on the baric point. The other part of the resultant 
is an unbalanced motor-couple, only susceptible of conservation 
as to its effects by an equal and opposite one in some other 
similar mass or aérilian assemblage. A certain integrity can, I 
conceive, be imparted to this first hoard of scaffolding of the new 
theory’s construction, by locating the conserving couples, of which 
the motor-couples supposed to be aboriginally welded together 
are the counter-equivalents, not ina single, but partly in one, and 
partly in another, set of free-moving aérilian points in such a way 
that, while the resultant motor-cowple is balanced by the first set, 
the force-resultant of the massed couples’ combination, will be 
balanced ¢hrough a counter-equivalent force-resultant in another 
mass-point éy the free motor-couples of the other aérilian set. 
The residue of this set’s couples will be occupied in opposing 
the unbalanced couple-residue of the couples massed together 
in the second baric point, while these couples’ transmittent force- 
resultant will be opposed 4y the still uncompensated portion of 
the motor-couples acting on the first free-moving set. Perfect 
compensation of the two dual resultants cannot then take place 
under these conditions, without exact counter-equivalence of the 
half-couple (or force-) resultants, and therefore also exact counter- 
equivalence in their native state between the two groups of 
motor-couples acting on the two free aérilian sets; at least, if 
we assume massed and moored aérilian points to have been 
all originally endowed in pairs with equal counter-couples, and 
if their modes of collection into mass-points and of producing 
force-resultants were aboriginally all alike. 
In our present undeveloped knowledge of the mathematical 
properties of tractive or motor-couples, and of their random- 
energy horse-powers’ geometrical relations to the common 
mechanical modes of exertion of directed energy in forces and 
couples, it would be premature and vain to speculate as Mr. 
Morris does, I believe too boldly and fearlessly, in his paper, 
upon Nature’s established order of progressive collection of baric 
points into ‘‘spheres,” or into the atoms and molecules which 
further build up atmospheres, suns, planets, and all ponderable 
bodies. My views diverge here from his in, at least, one salient 
point, that the ether (as we nuust still in sober science term his 
‘*interspheral matter”) is held, in his opinion, to be ponderable 
or ‘‘ gravitating,” and to be endowed with a vigour of motion 
which exempts it from yielding to its vigour of gravitation. By 
thus identifying ‘‘interspheral matter’s” or the ether’s particles 
with those of matter ‘‘ employing its motion secondarily about 
new centres of gravity” (of vea//y gravitating or ponderable 
‘spheres ””), the way is barred at once of explaining the 
ultimate sources of attractive and repulsive force by exercises of 
motor ‘‘yvigour.” But further than this we must evidently 
abandon definitely all reasonable hope of constructing out of 
particles’ ‘‘ incessant leaps in nodes of an interminable network 
of motions, affecting in long motor lines myriads of interspheral 
particles,” any intelligible framework of the important laws of 
radiation, magnetism, and electricity which we know that a clear 
comprehension of the ‘‘interspheral” ether’s real constitution 
would immediately unfold to us, if its real nature and that of 
its relations to ponderable matter were rightly understood. In 
the form therefore in which Mr. Morris’s theory presents itself to 
us, it fails completely (by only the slightest pcssible illusion, as 
I venture to submit, in the choice of its principal hypothesis) in 
attaining the admirably well pursued and well nigh compassed 
object of its otherwise exhaustively clear and excellently 
propounded arguments and demonstrations. 
In the view which 1 have here advanced, massed assemblages 
of aérilian points form irrevocably the points of gross or 
ponderable matter, while an equal number of moored points, 
inseparably connected two and two with the former ones, form 
bound <érilian assemblages equally untransformable and form- 
ing active individual parts of the unchanging ether. That tke 
latter points, unlike those of the massed group, may rove at 
large in graphic space, does not preclude them from all occupy- 
ing a common point in another space domain, just as a number of 
balloons may be all at one height, whatever the courses of their 
tracks upon a map may be. Nor, again, does an encounter of 
two balloons’ courses on amap necessarily entail collision between 
the two balloons, since at the time they may be at different 
