The ethereal origin of matter has been advocated by M. Saigey, Dr. Macvicar, and others. In a lecture by Professor Oliver Lodge, delivered at the London Institution in December 1882, he also advocates the ethereal origin of matter. “As far as we know,” to state his views in his own words, “this ether appears to be a perfectly homogeneous, incompressible, continuous body, incapable of being resolved into simple elements or atoms; it is, in fact, continuous, not molecular. There is no other body of which we can say this, and hence the properties of ether must be somewhat different from those of ordinary matter.” ... “One naturally asks, is there any such clear distinction to be drawn between ether and matter as we have hitherto tacitly assumed? May they not be different modifications, or even manifestations, of the same thing?” He then adopts Sir William Thomson’s theory of vortex atoms, into the details of which I need not here enter. In conclusion, says Professor Lodge, “I have now endeavoured to introduce you to the simplest conception of the material universe which has yet occurred to man—the conception that it is of one universal substance, perfectly homogeneous and continuous, and simple in structure, extending to the farthest limits of space of which we have any knowledge, existing equally everywhere: some portions either at rest or in simple irrotational motion, transmitting the undulations which we call light; other portions in rotational motion—in vortices, that is—and differentiated permanently from the rest of the medium by reason of this motion.
“These whirling portions constitute what we call matter; their motion gives them rigidity, and of them our bodies and all other material bodies with which we are acquainted are built up.
“One continuous substance filling all space, which can vibrate as light; which can be sheared into positive and negative electricity; which in whirls constitutes matter; and which transmits by continuity, and not by impact, every action and reaction of which matter is capable. This is the modern view of ether and its functions.”[[73]]
There is this objection to Professor Lodge’s theory: it is purely hypothetical. The vortex atoms are not only hypothetical, but the substance out of which these atoms are assumed to be formed is also itself hypothetical. We have no certain evidence that such a medium as is thus supposed exists, or that a medium possessing the qualities attributed to it could exist. In fact, we have here one hypothesis built upon another.
The vortex theory appears to me to be beset by a difficulty of another kind, viz. that of reconciling it with the First Law of Motion. According to that law no body possessing inertia can deviate from the straight line unless forced to do so. A planet will not move round the sun unless it be constantly acted upon by a force deflecting it from the straight path. A grindstone will not rotate on its axis unless its particles are held together by a force preventing them from flying off at a tangent to the curve in which they are moving. Centrifugal force must always be balanced by centripetal force. The difficulty is to understand what force counterbalances the centrifugal force of the rotating material of the vortex-atom. It is not because the centrifugal tendency of the rotating material is controlled by the exterior incompressible fluid, for it offers no resistance whatever to the passage of the atom through it—in short, in so far as the motion of the atom is concerned, this fluid is a perfect void. Now, if this fluid can offer no resistance to the passage of the atom as a whole, how then does it manage to offer such enormous resistance to the materials composing the atom, so as to continually deflect them from the straight path and compel them to move in a curve? The centrifugal force of these vortex-atoms must be enormous, for on it is assumed to depend the hardness or resistance of matter to pressure. Now the centripetal force which balances this centrifugal force must be equally enormous. If, then, this perfect fluid outside the vortex-atom can exert this enormous force on the revolving material without being itself possessed of vortex-motion, there does not seem to be any necessity for vortex-motion in order to produce resistance. In short, how is the existence of the atom possible under the physical conditions assumed in the theory? How this may be, like the space of four dimensions, may be expressed in mathematical language, but like it, I fear, it is unthinkable as a physical conception.
Mr. William Crookes on the pre-nebular condition of matter.—In his opening address before the Chemical Section of the British Association in 1886, Mr. William Crookes entered at considerable length into the question of the genesis and evolution of the chemical elements. I shall here give a brief statement of his views as embodied in his important address, and this I shall endeavour to do as nearly as possible in Mr. Crookes’s own words.
“We ask,” says Mr. Crookes, “whether the chemical elements may not have been evolved from a few antecedent forms of matter—or possibly from only one such—just as it is now held that all the innumerable variations of plants and animals have been developed from fewer and earlier forms of organic life: built up, as Dr. Gladstone remarks, from one another according to some general plan. This building up, or evolution, is above all things not fortuitous: the variation and development which we recognise in the universe run along certain fixed lines which have been preconceived and foreordained. To the careless and hasty eye design and evolution seem antagonistic; the more careful inquirer sees that evolution, steadily proceeding along an ascending scale of excellence, is the strongest argument in favour of a preconceived plan.”
Now, as in the organic world, so in the inorganic, it seems natural to view the chemical elements not as primordial, but as the gradual outcome of a process of development, possibly even of a struggle for existence. But this evolution of the elements must have taken place at a period so remote as to be difficult to grasp by the imagination, when our earth, or rather the matter of which it consists, was in a state very different from its present condition. The epoch of elemental development, remarks Mr. Crookes, is decidedly over, and it may be observed that in the opinion of not a few biologists the epoch of organic development is verging upon its close.
Is there then, in the first place, any direct evidence of the transmutation of any supposed “element” of our existing list into another, or of its resolution into anything simpler? To this question Mr. Crookes answers in the negative.
We find ourselves thus driven to indirect evidence—to that which we may glean from the mutual relations of the elementary bodies. First, we may consider the conclusion arrived at by Herschel, and pursued by Clerk-Maxwell, that atoms bear the impress of manufactured articles. “A manufactured article may well be supposed to involve a manufacturer. But it does something more: it implies certainly a raw material, and probably, though not certainly, the existence of by-products, residues, paraleipomena. What or where is here the raw material? Can we detect any form of matter which bears to the chemical elements a relation like that of a raw material to the finished product, like that, say, of coal-tar to alizarin? Or can we recognise any elementary bodies which seem like waste or refuse? Or are all the elements, according to the common view, co-equals? To these questions no direct answers are forthcoming.”