THE NATURE OF THE EXISTENCE OF MATTER. 223 
•country three hundred years ago, and who describes a people living in this local- 
ity, whose cloth and other articles tallies with that found by Colonel Stephenson, 
■which is a very important point indeed. 
Denver, Colo., July 22, 1883. 
PHILOSOPHY. 
THE NATURE OF THE EXISTENCE OF MATTER. 
E. R. KNOWLES. 
" We feel but the pulse of that viewless hand 
Which ever has been and still shall be, 
In the stellar orb and the grain of sand. 
Through Nature's endless paternity." 
Philosophers are now obliged to refer all the phenomena of the universe to 
the action of a substance occupying space, which communicates light, heat, elec- 
tricity, and, gravitation from one body to another, and mental emotion and imag- 
inary ideas from one mind to another. This omnipresent medium is called Ethe- 
riuin, 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 attracted by the Sun, 
2. Philosophers agree that the atmosphere does not extend more than two 
hundred miles from the Earth's surface. 
3. Heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and gravitation operate in an ex- 
hausted receiver just as well as elsewhere 
4. One mind sometimes influences another independently of ordinary sen- 
sation or muscular motion, without contact or perceptible connection. 
Says Professor Tyndall, "The domain in which this motion of light is car- 
ried on lies entirely beyond the reach of our senses. The waves of light 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 phenom- 
ena 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 whether 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 
iound all explained by the law of gravitation. He therefore regarded this law as 
