(b) The ether, whatever its nature is, is from the sun and from the suns:[903] the suns are the generators of it, the store-houses of it, the diffusers of it.[904]
(c) Without the ether there could be no motion; without it particles of ponderable matter could not glide over each other; without it there could be no impulse to excite those particles into action.
(d) Ether determines the constitution of bodies. Were there no ether there could be no change of constitution in substance; water, for instance, could only [pg 575]exist as a substance, compact and insoluble beyond any conception we could form of it. It could never even be ice, never fluid, never vapour, except for ether.
(e) Ether connects sun with planet, planet with planet, man with planet, man with man. Without ether there could be no communication in the Universe; no light, no heat, no phenomenon of motion.
Thus we find that Ether and elastic Atoms are, in the alleged mechanical conception of the Universe, the Spirit and Soul of Kosmos, and that the theory—put it in any way and under any disguise—always leaves a more widely opened issue for men of Science to speculate upon beyond the line of modern Materialism[905] than the majority avails itself of. Atoms, Ether, or both, modern speculation cannot get out of the circle of ancient thought; and the latter was soaked through with archaic Occultism. Undulatory or corpuscular theory—it is all one. It is speculation from the aspects of phenomena, not from the knowledge of the essential nature of the cause and causes. When Modern Science has explained to its audience the late achievements of Bunsen and Kirchoff; when it has shown the seven colours, the primary of a ray which is decomposed in a fixed order on a screen; and has described the respective lengths of luminous waves, what has it proved? It has justified its reputation for exactness in mathematical achievement by measuring even the length of a luminous wave—“varying from about seven hundred and sixty millionths of a millimètre at the red end of the spectrum to about three hundred and ninety-three millionths of a millimètre at the violet end.” But when the exactness of the calculation with regard to the effect on the light-wave is thus vindicated, Science is forced to admit that the Force, which is the supposed cause, is believed to produce “inconceivably minute undulations” in some medium—“generally regarded as identical with the ethereal medium”[906]—and that medium itself is still only—a “hypothetical agent”!
Auguste Comte's pessimism with respect to the possibility of knowing some day the chemical composition of the Sun, has not, as has been averred, been belied thirty years later by Kirchoff. The [pg 576] spectroscope has helped us to see that the elements, with which the modern Chemist is familiar, must in all probability be present in the Sun's outward “robes”—not in the Sun itself; and, taking these “robes,” the solar cosmic veil, for the Sun itself, the Physicists have declared its luminosity to be due to combustion and flame, and mistaking the vital principle of that luminary for a purely material thing, have called it “chromosphere.”[907] We have only hypotheses and theories so far, not law—by any means.
Section VII. Life, Force, or Gravity.
The imponderable fluids have had their day; mechanical Forces are less talked about; Science has put on a new face for this last quarter of a century; but gravitation has remained, owing its life to new combinations after the old ones had nearly killed it. It may answer scientific hypotheses very well, but the question is whether it answers as well to truth, and represents a fact in nature. Attraction by itself is not sufficient to explain even planetary motion; how can it then presume to explain the rotatory motion in the infinitudes of Space? Attraction alone will never fill all the gaps, unless a special impulse is admitted for every sidereal body, and the rotation of every planet with its satellites is shown to be due to some one cause combined with attraction. And even then, says an Astronomer,[908] Science would have to name that cause.
Occultism has named it for ages, and so have all the ancient Philosophers; but then all such beliefs are now proclaimed exploded superstitions. The extra-cosmic God has killed every possibility of belief in intra-cosmic intelligent Forces; yet who, or what, is the original “pusher” in that motion? Says Francœur:[909]