Sam Sam’s Son.
October 8, 1827.
[388] See the West Briton paper of the 5th October.
Discoveries
OF THE
ANCIENTS AND MODERNS.
No. XII.
Ether—Weight and Elasticity of the Air—Air-guns.
By ether the moderns understand a rare fluid, or species of matter, beyond the atmosphere, and penetrating it, infinitely more subtile than the air we respire, of an immense extent, filling all the spaces where the celestial bodies roll, yet making no sensible resistance to their motions. Some suppose it to be a sort of air, much purer than that which invests our globe; others, that its nature approaches to that of the celestial fire, which emanates from the sun and other stars; others, again, suppose it to be generically different from all other matter, sui generis, and its parts finer than those of light; alleging that the exceeding tenuity of its parts renders it capable of that vast expansive force, which is the source of all that pressure and dilatation whence most of the phenomena in nature arise; for that by the extreme subtilty of its parts it intimately penetrates all bodies, and exerts its energy everywhere. This last is the opinion of Newton and Locke. But whatever be the sentiments now entertained on the subject, we find the origin of all of them in the ancients.
The stoics taught, that there was a subtile and active fire which pervaded the whole universe, that by the energy of this ethereal substance, to which they gave the name of ether, all the parts of nature were produced, preserved, and linked together; that it embraced every thing; and that in it the celestial bodies performed their revolutions.