We also say that this matter possesses, or more strictly is, substance—that is, it is self-caused and self-sustaining. That it is objectively real—indeed the most real conception we have.
We have finally one very important concept, that of form, whose relation to matter is most clearly expressed by the statement, matter displays form. Form is a limitation of, or in, space, and may be conceived of apart from matter, but the latter is required for its manifestation to the senses, by, in the little boy's words, "drawing a line around your thinks." We thus, since all aggregations of matter are perpetually changing as to their forms, do not attribute reality to form, but for this so-called impermanence, think of it as the least real thing we know, the very opposite of matter, an incident only of the latter and a very non-entity.
It is worthy however of remark that of these two, matter and form, both absolutely dependent on space for their existence (although not an attribute of this in any way), matter cannot be thought of without form, but form can be thought of apart from matter, as a mere limitation of emptiness. In other words, the idea of form must come before that of matter, and is pre-essential to this. By a purely deductive process this should lead us to question whether essential reality does not lie rather in the concept "form" than in the concept "matter." And a notable confirmation of this is given when we consider a common error of speech. We say "all forms change," and naturally therefore attribute non-essentiality to form; but we really mean to say "matter is continually changing in form"—leaving one form and entering into another. This statement is a correct one, and fully accords with the last word of physics to-day.
Evolution has made it abundantly clear that the most lasting, changeless, adamantine thing in the manifested world is form. Nature grinds the rocks to powder and turns metals to gases in infinitely quicker time and with less effort than she modifies ever so little the forms of manifestation. Form ever recurs and matter—as we know it—again and again obediently fills the outlines.
But as if the deductive argument for the superiority of form over matter in its eternal existence were not enough, inductive science as well is day by day dissolving so-called matter to nothingness, or more strictly, to a mere incident of form, produced to meet the conditions of sense-perception. A physical universe is daily becoming a less proven fact. Gravitation is laid down as a universal material law, notwithstanding that certain facts attendant on cometary bodies had to be thereby incidentally slurred over, but from the Lick telescope we now hear that late observations indicate some other force than gravitation as the dominating one in certain nebulæ. But a blow at the nebular hypothesis rocks the very citadel of the physical theory.
Scientists some time ago postulated and have since by sheer necessity regarded the ether of space as proven to exist. Yet so difficult is it for us to modify the method or form of our apprehension of the world around us that the majority still prefer to work on through the paradox of a material universe, which includes an ether lacking in the fundamental characteristics ascribed to matter. All known matter has weight and obeys gravitation; the ether, by the very theory on which it rests, does neither. The transmission of material phenomena requires a material vehicle, as is not only demonstrated by every day experience, but is necessarily involved in a system holding that all phenomena are but incidents of matter, the one only reality. Nevertheless any material vehicle, however rarified, gives rise to some friction when bodies pass through it, retarding them; the ether does nothing of this. The relative distances between the molecules in the rarest gas are enormous; the ether of science is said to fill all space homogeneously. Science indeed seems to have restored the worship of "Pater Aither," a god outside the material universe, yet within every part of it and supporting it. But they have new names for it all, and in view of the peculiar opaqueness, materiality, which the expressions and forms wherein we do our so-called thinking seem to possess before the Perceiver, they may be forgiven for not recognizing their teaching in Hesiod and Lucian and the Vedas.
The most illuminating suggestion in this whole matter we owe, among physicists, to Lord Kelvin, in his vortex-ring theory of matter. Taking the rings of smoke puffed by a locomotive or a pipe, and making allowances for the friction of the medium in which they revolve, Lord Kelvin found a complete identity in behavior, at every point of comparison he was able to institute, between these rings and the individual atoms into which all matter is held to be divisible. One most significant fact so demonstrated is that such a vortex-ring, once brought into existence, and being free from frictional or any other outside interference to break up its circuit of motion, is eternal and indestructible, an entity in itself. The theory then is that an atom of matter is a vortex-ring in or of ether, set up by some underlying force, and that all the attributes displayed by material atoms are incidents of this vortex mode of motion. Its hardness is the same as the impenetrability of a whirlpool through which a swimmer cannot pass. Its stability is of the same sort as that of the tops, held contrary to gravity by a cord on one end of the axis, so long as they revolve rapidly—a principle utilized to give absolute rigidity to the steering gear of torpedoes. And it is the simplest explanation of atomic affinities to suggest that it is the rate, or coefficient, of vibration (vibration being another name for circuit of activity) which determines the attractive or repellant force we see manifested.
And there is a most curious resemblance in all this to John Worrell Keeley's last theory—that each individual has a dominant coefficient of vibration, which gives rise to and explains all our happy and unhappy associations in life, so that as the newspapers hastened to say, if we only knew how to find this note, scientific inquests beforehand would drive the divorce courts out of business.
The music of the spheres, the thought of individuals as notes in a universal concord are very poetic, but inasmuch as music is the art of harmonic expressive vibrations manifested to sense as sound, there is, if Lord Kelvin, and some others, are right, at least as much hard scientific fact in it all as imagery.
In short, the leading fact of science to-day is plainly, that Nature draws forms which outline and illustrate the underlying realities of evolutionary progress, and these forms are grasped by our sense-perceptions as endowed (by virtue of the self-persistent and destruction-resisting nature given to them by the force that causes them) with the attributes of hardness or impenetrability and mutual attraction. Differently stated, what we call matter is in no sense substance, and the attributes by which we describe it are only the effects produced upon our senses by contact with force-forms, manifesting the life in nature. So that the really substantial thing in life is seen to be form, of which so-called matter is but an incident, apparitional only, and of little reality and no substantiality whatever—a term to express the condition of manifestation.