Structure for the Ether. 17& 



transparency, that its properties are of the simplest and 

 most uniform kind, and free from any imperfections which 

 would accumulate waste energy in particular fractions of 

 itself. If we attribute all locomotion to matter in its most 

 general sense, including electric charges ; and all elasticity to 

 ether, regarding the latter as the uniting and potentially 

 strained medium responsible for every force which holds 

 atoms together ; we shall be on sound and simple lines. This 

 is not to deny that potential energy may be susceptible of 

 ultimate kinetic explanation, in terms of the postulated fine- 

 grained vorticity. 



How the ether can be tied into the knots which we call 

 electrons — in other words, how the peculiar regions or 

 singular points characteristic of electric charge are consti- 

 tuted — remains to be discovered. The small second-order 

 tension responsible for gravitation will, I feel surp, be 

 accounted for as soon as the electric structure is made out. 

 The fact that a luminous disturbance simulates the funda- 

 mental properties of matter is Giving us a broad hint. 



A wave-front is an evanescent kind of matter — a sort ot 

 attempt of an accelerated electron to reproduce itself : the 

 question is how such a peculiarity, when generated, can be- 

 made permanent and its violent locomotion checked. We 

 must find out how to disturb the ether in such a way that 

 the modification shall remain concentrated, and not instantly 

 rush away and disperse itself w T ith the speed of light. The 

 electric and the magnetic components must be separated,, 

 the one kept and the other annulled. 



In this connexion, I take permission to make a few extracts from 

 the 1907 edition of ' Modern Views of Electricity,' so as to bring- the- 

 suggestions before those who may be interested in them. I quote from 

 pages 330 onwards : — 



"Wherever electrons and atoms exist, they modify the ether in. 

 their immediate neighbourhood, so that waves passing through a 

 portion of space containing them are affected by their presence, 

 as if the ether were more or less loaded by them ; because the 

 electric displacements which go on in the unseparated and still 

 perfectly united constituents of free ether [in a beam of light] are 

 also shared to some extent by the separated peculiarities .... 

 A.11 those charges which possess externally-reaching lines of force 

 must share in the motion of the waves, without having the requisite 

 amount of resilience to compensate for their inertia." 



•'The positive and negative constituents, when they combine or 

 cohere, do not destroy each other and revert into plain ether again ; 

 on the contrary, they retain their individuality and persist, in either 

 a combined or separate state. We do not know how to produce-, 

 or to destroy these peculiarities .... [for whereas] matter can be, 



