332 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
s T o q ooo ' oooq ^ of a grain. We need not trouble ourselves with 
the nature of this matter, nor indulge, however pleasant the 
exercise, in the Newtonian idea that matter is condensed light ; 
but we may accept the fact that here in the universe is so 
much substance having weight and under varying circum- 
stances having various constitution and various form ; in itself 
divisible, until we arrive at an ultimate particle then no longer 
divisible, and as we should gather from analogy existing as a 
sphere. 
Left to itself in this state ponderable matter were inactive, 
dead. We cannot realize the condition of matter thus inert, 
because absolute inertia or death is what we have never seen 
in any particle of matter ; but we may conceive inertia, all 
particles holding one place at rest, and this is the first element 
of the problem before us. 
The second element is the all-pervading ether, solar fire. It 
is without weight, substance, form, or colour ; it is matter in- 
finitely divisible and its particles repel each other ; its rarity 
is such that we have no word except ether by which to ex- 
press it. It pervades and fills space, but alone it too is quies- 
cent — dead. We bring together the two elements, the inert 
matter, the self-repulsive ether, and thereupon the dead pon- 
derable matter is vivified : through the particles of the pon- 
derable substance the ether penetrates, and so penetrating, it 
combines with the ponderable particles and holds them in 
mass, holds them together in one bond of union; they are 
dissolved in the ether. 
This distribution of solid ponderable matter through ether 
extends, according to the theory before us, to everything that 
exists at this moment. The ether is all-pervading. The 
human body itself is charged with the ether ; its minute par- 
ticles are held together by it : the plant is in the same condi- 
tion ; the most solid earth, rock, adamant, crystal, metal, all the 
same. 
But there are differences in the capacities of different kinds 
of ponderable matter to receive sun force, and upon this 
depends the various changing conditions of matter; the solid, the 
liquid, the gaseous condition. Solid bodies have attracted calo- 
ric in excess over fluid bodies and hence their firmer cohesion : 
when a portion of molten zinc is poured upon a plate of solid 
zinc, the molten zinc becomes solid, because there is a rush of 
caloric from the liquid to the solid, and in the equalization the 
particles previously loose or liquid are more closely brought 
together ; and when water at 60 ° is poured on ice at a tempe- 
rature below zero it becomes also ice and is added to the mass 
of ice, because there is a rush of caloric from the liquid to the 
solid, and the whole mass becomes incorporate. 
