There are many secondary qualities exhibited by matter in some of its forms, such as hardness, brittleness, malleability, colour, etc., and the same ultimate element may exhibit itself in the most diverse ways, as is the case with carbon, which exists as lamp-black, charcoal, graphite, jet, anthracite and diamond, ranging from the softest to the hardest of known bodies. Then it may be black or colourless. Gold is yellow, copper red, silver white, chlorine green, iodine purple. The only significance any or all of such qualities have for us here is that the ether exhibits none of them. There is neither hardness nor brittleness, nor colour, nor any approach to any of the characteristics for the identification of elementary matter.
22. SENSATION DEPENDS UPON MATTER.
However great the mystery of the relation of body to mind, it is quite true that the nervous system is the mechanism by and through which all sensation comes, and that in our experience in the absence of nerves there is neither sensation nor consciousness. The nerves themselves are but complex chemical structures; their molecular constitution is said to embrace as many as 20,000 atoms, chiefly carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. There must be continuity of this structure too, for to sever a nerve is to paralyze all beyond. If all knowledge comes through experience, and all experience comes through the nervous system, the possibilities depend upon the mechanism each one is provided with for absorbing from his environment, what energies there are that can act upon the nerves. Touch, taste, and smell imply contact, sound has greater range, and sight has the immensity of the universe for its field. The most distant but visible star acts through the optic nerve to present itself to consciousness. It is not the ego that looks out through the eyes, but it is the universe that pours in upon the ego.
Again, all the known agencies that act upon the nerves, whether for touch or sound or sight, imply matter in some of its forms and activities, to adapt
the energy to the nervous system. The mechanism for the perception of light is complicated. The light acts upon a sensitive surface where molecular structure is broken up, and this disturbance is in the presence of nerve terminals, and the sensation is not in the eye but in the sensorium. In like manner for all the rest; so one may fairly say that matter is the condition for sensation, and in its absence there would be nothing we call sensation.
THE ETHER IS INSENSIBLE TO NERVES.
The ether is in great contrast with matter in this particular. There is no evidence that in any direct way it acts upon any part of the nervous system, or upon the mind. It is probable that this lack of relation between the ether and the nervous system was the chief reason why its discovery was so long delayed, as the mechanical necessities for it even now are felt only by such as recognize continuity as a condition for the transmission of energy of whatever kind it may be. Action at a distance contradicts all experience, is philosophically incredible, and is repudiated by every one who once perceives that energy has two factors—substance and motion.
The table given below presents a list of twenty-two of the known properties of matter contrasted with those exhibited by the ether. In none of them
are the properties of the two identical, and in most of them what is true for one is not true for the other. They are not simply different, they are incomparable.