380 
rOPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
primary pc* rt in the production of the phenomena resulting 
from the action of the energia upon visible matter. 
In respect to those who imagine that the theory of the 
existence of a nervous ether tends to materialise the phenomena 
of life and of living action, the answer is simple. The theory 
treats of an assumed material part of the living organism, and 
has no reference whatever to that more distant or spiritual 
essence of our nature of which, as yet, no more is known, 
physically, than of the energia natures itself. We must all 
accept that the impulses of men and animals, the volitions, 
the sympathies, the passions, are manifested by and through 
the material organism, the matter as a mechanism obeying the 
force that moves it. The tongue of man that speaks, the hand 
that gives, takes, strikes, aids, begs ; the feet that make pro- 
gression, and all parts that act, act positively as mechanisms 
of material character. How they act, in obedience to the 
impulses that move them, becomes, consequently, a distinct 
question that may be studied apart from the impulses them- 
selves, and in the theory this is implied. The impulses, I 
mean, are considered as initial and independent motions, the 
origin of which forms no part whatever of the theory of a ner- 
vous ether. 
Of the first order of critics, they alone appreciate the mean- 
ing I would attach to the theory of a nervous or animal ether. 
The idea attempted to be conveyed by the theory is that between 
the molecules of the matter, solid or fluid, of which the nervous 
organisms and indeed of which all the organic parts of the body 
are composed, there exists a refined subtle medium, vaporous 
or gaseous, which holds the molecules in a condition for motion 
upon each other, and for arrangement and rearrangement of 
form ; a medium by and through which all motion is conveyed ; 
by and through which the one organ or part of the body is held 
in communion with the other parts and by and through which 
the outer living world communicates with the living man : a 
medium which, being present, enables the phenomena of life to 
be demonstrated, and which, being universally absent, leaves the 
body actually dead — in such condition, i.e. that it cannot, by 
any phenomenon of motion, prove itself to be alive. 
I hope I have now made clear what is generally meant by 
the theory of a nervous ether. But there are yet two other 
points on which it is essential, for a moment, to dwell. In 
using the word ether I do not necessarily convey the common 
idea of a body belonging to the chemical family or group called 
the ethers, or the ethyl series. I use the word ether in its 
general sense, as meaning a very light vaporous or gaseous 
matter : I use it, in short, as the astronomer uses it wheij he 
speaks of the ether of space, by which he means a subtle but 
