Thus we see the planets that around it sweep and roll; swift-footed Mercury with his wondrous speed, and dazzling Venus with her silver sheen; Mars the god of war with his ruddy glow, and mighty Jupiter with his orange hue, and the yellow Saturn with her mysterious rings, the blue Uranus, and the more distant Neptune, with all the satellites that to it belong.
Then far far away the brilliant Sirius--the Dog Star, Cygnet, Centauri, the Great Bear, and a thousand others.
The Pleiades and the twenty millions of suns that form our own galaxy and the Milky Way, with all their varied colours, tints, and hues of white, golden, orange, ruby, red and blue, green and grey, silver, purple and yellow, buff and fawn, emerald and green, lilac and coppery. Thus we see the distant Orion, so far away that swift-footed Light, with its speed of more than eleven million miles per minute, has to travel for more than thirty thousand years before it spans the gulf that intervenes between it and us, and brings to us the news of its existence there.
Then the spectroscope with its revealing power literally tears asunder wave from wave, and reveals the mystic message which each doth bear, of the distant things from which they come, of each and every sort and kind.
Thus we know, that in the solar fires there ever burn such things as hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, and also, in a vaporous state, aluminium, sodium, iron, magnesium, cobalt, calcium, chromium, copper, manganese, zinc, and others.
Thus light-waves are speeding everywhere, and from all material things. They come from our own sun, and rush in, and flood the earth's aerial veil, the atmosphere; and “Each little atom of matter, like a mirror, reflects and re-reflects them as if in sport, buffeting each luminous ray from one to another, increasing and amplifying it by an infinity of repercussions” (Herschel), and then in their entirety and whole, like a huge multi-mirror, so blend and mingle them that they come to earth's surface in that soft radiance we call Light, and bathe it as in a sea of mellowed glory.
Art. 50. Aether: its Motions.--The question of the exact motions of the Aether is a question which has involved the attention of scientific men for many years, and which is at the present time receiving the attention of some of our most advanced scientists, not only in this country but in other countries also.
Whether the Aether in space is at rest, or is moving along with all the bodies that float in it, so to speak, is a question of the greatest importance to scientists and philosophers generally, as the particular character of the motions of the Aether, which are either suggested or ascribed to it from the analogies of Nature, are sure to have a most important bearing not only on the motions of all the planets and satellites, but also upon such questions as the aberration of light, and such difficulties as presented by Lord Kelvin in his paper on “Clouds on the Undulatory Theory of Light” (Phil. Mag., July 1902).
I need hardly point out that the hypothesis that Aether is gravitative, is bound to play a most important part in the consideration and development of this phase of the study of the universal aetherial medium. It is not my intention, however, at this stage of the work to go fully into the development of this aspect of the subject.
The application of this principle will be considered at the right time, and in the right place. It is, however, generally assumed, that the Aether is at rest in space, and that the earth, the planets, and the sun and all stars, move through it with varying velocity, although, as Lord Kelvin points out, such an assumption is covered with a cloud which up to the present is “as dense as ever.” Of course, if the Aether be at rest, and the planets and other heavenly bodies move through it with varying velocity, then the only assumption regarding the Aether is, that it is frictionless, but, as I have shown in [Art. 45], this is opposed to all philosophical reasoning, and therefore to experience and observation.