•270 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



mind to another. This interstellar, and indeed, omnipresent medium is called 

 Etherium, or the Ether. Most scientific men are fully convinced of its reality. 

 It is a necessary inference from the following facts : 



1. The planets influence each other and are all influenced by the sun. 



2. Philosophers agree that the atmosphere does not extend more than eighty 

 miles above the earth's surface. 



3. Heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and gravitation, operate in an ex- 

 hausted receiver, as well as elsewhere. 



4. One mind sometimes influences another independently of ordinary sen- 

 sation or muscular motion, without contact or perceptible connection. 



Says Prof. Tyndall, '' The domain in which this motion of light is carried on 

 is entirely beyond the reach of our senses. The waves of Hght require a medium 

 for their formation and propagation, but we cannot see, or feel, or taste, or smell 

 this medium. How, then, has its existence been established? By showing that 

 by the assumption of this wonderful intangible ether all the phenomena of optics 

 are accounted for with a fullness and clearness, and conclusiveness which leave 

 no desire of the intellect unfulfilled. When the law of gravitation first suggested 

 itself to the mind of Newton, what did he do ? He set himself to examine wheth- 

 er it accounted for all the facts. He determined the courses of the planets; he 

 calculated the rapidity of the moon's fall toward the earth; he considered the 

 precession of the equinoxes, the ebb and flow of the tides, and found all explain- 

 ed by the law of gravitation. He, therefore, regarded this law as established, and 

 the verdict of science subsequently confirmed his conclusion. 



On similar, and, if possible, on stronger grounds, we found our belief in the 

 existence of the universal ether. It explains facts far more various and compli- 

 cated than those on which Newton based his law. If a single phenomenon could 

 be pointed out which the ether is proved incompetent to explain, we should have 

 to give it up; but no such phenomenon has ever been pointed out. It is, there- 

 fore, at least as certain that space is filled with a medium by means of which 

 suns and stars diffuse their radiant power, as that it is traversed by that force 

 which holds, not only our planetary system, but the immeasurable heaven's 

 themselves in its grasp." To other kinds of ethereal action are referable muscu- 

 lar motion, sensation, and all other known phenomena, except the as yet inexpli- 

 cable phenomena of consciousness and volition. 



Says Prof. J. Stanley Grimes: " Light cannot penetrate boards and stone 

 walls, but magnetic force can do so ; for a magnet affects iron filings through 

 such obstacles, almost as if there was nothing in the way; and so also does grav- 

 itation. It is plain that if we could perceive through the medium of this magnetic 

 force instead of light, we could see through boards and walls as easily as the 

 magnet operates through them; for the magnet operates in the dark just as well 

 as in the light. We must conclude, therefore, from the great number of facts 

 which we have upon this subject, that there is a motion of etherium, different 

 from light, by means of which the force of gravitation is communicated ; and an- 

 other modification of ethereal motion, by means of which magnetism penetrates 



