18 INTERPRETATIONS OF NATURE. 
This intelligent power is God. 
If, in a moment of careless thought, any one should 
feel that a deduction which proclaims the existence of 
such a power is an absurdity—because it, at the same 
time, admits the impossibility of defining its real nature 
—let him reflect upon the facts in the physical world 
which are demonstrated as true, but are, nevertheless, 
incomprehensible, also. 
Light, for example, in its physical aspect, is a vibra- 
tory movement of a material medium called ‘‘zther,” 
which transmits the tremors caused by a luminous body 
at the rate of one hundred ninety thousand miles in a 
second. In the scientific use of the imagination we see 
this ether filling every space between worlds and molecu- 
les—pervading everything ‘‘as freely as the air moves 
through a grove of trees.’ We see the particles, which, 
as attenuated forms of matter, constitute this ether, in 
motion. These ethereal tremors, these dancing atoms, 
impinge upon our senses, and are revealed to us as radi- 
ant heat, or light, or actinic force, acoor eine to the rapid- 
ity of their motion. 
The colors of the visible spectrum—which give such 
variegated beauty to nature—also depend upon the 
number of times, per second, these ethereal waves beat 
against the eye. 
What, then, is this medium called ether, which thus 
throbs and pulsates, and transmits the thrill of worlds 
with such velocity? How shall we define that of which 
the senses give no knowledge ; which has neither smell 
nor taste, and can not be felt, heard nor seen? Shall 
we speak of it as matter when, to the senses, the known 
properties of matter cannot be found? Let us call it 
the vapor of cosmic atoms which defies the senses, and 
remains an unmeasured factor in the equation of the 
universe. 
By processes of pure reasoning, that which thus 
