THE UNDERLYING FACTS OF SCIENCE 579 



may be pressure in space brings one back to the consideration of a 

 gaseous ether, but can not pressure exist in a corpuscular medium, and 

 may not the pressure be a manifestation of the innumerable energies 

 which continually pulsate through space? If all forces — including 

 chemical forces — were suddenly removed from a certain point in space, 

 there could be no activity and therefore no pressure. Pressure is the 

 result of activity, of bombardment, and space is truly " alive " with 

 activity, for, as Clerk Maxwell said, energy transmitted must exist for 

 a time in the medium. No wonder, therefore, that it is under pressure, 

 which Sir Oliver Lodge estimates as equivalent to 10 37 ergs per cubic 

 centimeter. 



Before leaving the subject of pressure in space, it may be well to 

 look further into the matter of ethereal activity. The activity of the 

 ether might very well be of a higher order than that of the energies or 

 forces known to us. When we consider that as far as we can discover 

 the hottest stars have the simplest spectra, it may well be suggested that 

 gravitation, electricity and light may represent falls of potential and 

 not rises from the inherent activity of the ether, which, calculated to 

 secure the necessary rigidity in the theory of vortical motion, is of 

 stupendous magnitude. This degradation of the energy of the universe 

 of ether into the energies known to us is in the same line of develop- 

 ment as the degradation of matter, and the laws regulating the con- 

 ceivable may logically govern the inconceivable. 



No material conception of the ether is therefore to be considered 

 excepting one which, at first sight, appears perfectly paradoxical, of an 

 elastic solid of a density of 10 12 (Lodge), as rigid perhaps as steel, and, 

 in that case, fifty thousand times less dense than hydrogen (Michelson). 



The Creation of Atoms 



If, as already stated, energy, as we know it, is originated in matter — 

 though not by it — and transmitted through a medium the ultimate 

 particles of which are very much smaller than and different in nature 

 from the atoms of matter, the disturbance at the source of origin must 

 be transmitted by a number of corpuscles of that medium and propa- 

 gated as a bundle of vibrations several corpuscles in diameter. This 

 bundle of lines of force may be called a tube of force ; this tube of force 

 may be of any shape whatsoever, depending on the shape of the source of 

 origin and the nature of its disturbance. 



Plateau has shown that a liquid cylinder of excessive length and 

 with a free surface first assumes an undulating contour, and then 

 breaks up into separate vibrating drops. The resistance of the medium 

 apparently puts the stream into vibration which causes a separation 

 into equal drops by periodic strains which finally overcome the surface 

 tension. The researches of Bjerknes confirmed Plateau's experiment 



