224 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
established, and the verdict of science subsequently confirmed his conclusion. 
On similar, and if possible, on stronger grounds, we found our belief in the ex- 
istence of the universal ether. It explains facts far more various and complicated 
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, therefore, 
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 heavens themselves in its 
grasp." And again, " The ether which conveys the pulses of light and heat not 
only fills the celestial space, bathing the sides of suns and planets, but it also 
encircles the atoms of which these suns and planets are composed. It is the 
motion of these atoms, and not that of any sensible parts of bodies that the ether 
conveys; it is this motion that constitutes the objective cause of what in our sen- 
sations are light and heat." Again he says, "Two atoms of oxygen and one of 
sulphur constitute the molecule of sulphurous acid. Now it has been recently 
shown, in a great number of instances, that waves of ether issuing from a strong 
source, such as the Sun or the electric light, are competent to shake asunder the 
atoms of gaseous molecules. A chemist would call this ' decomposition ' by light, 
but it behooves us who are examining the power and function of the imagination, 
to keep before us the physical images which underlie our terms. Therefore, I 
say, sharply and definitely, that the components of the molecules of sulphurous 
acid are shaken asunder by the ether waves. * * * * * 
* * * * Here, then, our ether-waves untie the bond of chem- 
ical affinity, and liberate a body — sulphur — which at ordinary temperatures is a 
solid, and which therefore soon becomes an object of the senses." To other 
modifications of ethereal action are referable muscular motion, sensation, and all 
the other phenomena of the material universe. 
Says Professor 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 gravitation. 
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 hght. 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 another 
modification of etherean motion, by means of which magnetism penetrates through 
opaque bodies. It, therefore, requires no stretch of the imagination to admit a 
modification of ethereal force which affects the brain and its organs, and produces 
Consciousness and Clairvoyance in a subject who is, by the process of etherean 
induction, brought into communication with it. If we analyze a sunbeam, we 
can demonstrate that besides light and heat it contains another kind or motion of 
Etherium, different from light and heat, which produces powerful chemical effects 
