i88i.J 
The Formative Power in Nature. 
273 
The luminiferous ether by substitution for the “ lumi in 
germs ” still leaves me at a loss ; it is a phrase fre- 
quently met with, but what does it mean ? If presented as 
the source of light (it neither bears nor produces) it is 
meaningless. The ether permeates all things ; hence, if 
“ luminiferous ,” there were no possibility of darkness — no 
night. All conceptions as to what the ether is must be 
purely conjectural. Balloonists assert that the higher they 
ascend the atmosphere the darker and colder it becomes ; 
yet they have not probed it by more than one-tenth vertically. 
There is no vacuum. Were the ether the source of light or 
light giving, the higher the ascent the brighter the aspeCt. 
The sun is the source of light, but this light does notarisefrom 
the heat of the sun : were it so, the higher the ascent the 
warmer the atmosphere should be. Coldness and darkness 
are not very consistent with a luminiferous ether, nor with a 
heat-emitting sun. 
The phrase luminiferous ether has grown into vogue be- 
cause it has the seeming of science, and has been used by some 
scientific orator who delighted in words having more sound 
than significance, and hence adopted by others in the pre- 
sumption of value ; but whatever that be it is purely sup- 
positious. It is doubtful whether the man who first 
connected luminiferous with the ether knew its meaning. 
There can be no question but that the sun is the source of 
both light and heat, so far as his system is concerned, by 
transmutation {correlation) ; as well it might be said that the 
agglomerated substances which coalesce to make the proto- 
plasm are the sources of life, as to talk of the luminiferous 
ether as the source of light. 
H. B. surmises the absence of gravity, as in connection 
with the ether, prevents its solidification. If it be not from 
the ether, from whence are derived the substances we know 
as matter, solid or gaseous ? Some German philosophers 
appear to treat gravity and gravitation as distinct properties ; 
the first referring to terrestrial substances and things con- 
nected with the earth ; the latter in relation of sun with sun 
thus permeating the universe. 
We know not what the ether is, whether a creation or 
what ; but whatever it be, it is no doubt the nucleus — or I 
may say the seething-vat — from whence Nature draws her 
resources, and out of which all we know as terrestrial 
formations arose by condensations, coagulations, and force 
impulsions. 
I do not think the system a good one which needlessly 
intrudes the idea of the Creator in a theological sense, or to 
