Ether

“ This measurable speed, says Sir Oliver Lodge, gives the ether away, and shows its finite character.
It seems as if the theory of the ether must be true, because it fits in so well with the enigmatic, contradictory, incomprehensible character of the universe as revealed to our minds. We can affirm and deny almost anything of the ether—that it is immaterial, and yet the source of all material; that it is absolutely motionless, yet the cause of all motion; that it is the densest body in nature, and yet the most rarified; that it is everywhere, but defies detection ”

“ All that we ourselves can effect, in the material universe, is to alter the motion and configuration of masses of matter; we can move matter, by our muscles, and that is all we can do directly: everything else is indirect.
But now comes the question, how is it possible for matter to be composed of ether? How is it possible for a solid to be made out of fluid? A solid possesses the properties of rigidity, impenetrability, elasticity, and such-like; how can these be imitated by a perfect fluid such as the ether must be? ”

“ The particles embedded in the ether are not independent of it, they are closely connected with it, it is probable that they are formed out of it : they are not like grains of sand suspended in water; they seem more like minute crystals in a mother liquor. ”

“ Today we know that the ether is matter, the same as our own, only finer and rarer and in much more rapid vibration. We know that this ether has its solids, liquids and gases formed from molecules of its atoms, even as our own are formed. We know that its atoms combine as ours do, and while we have but eighty elementary combinations, it must have more than double the number. We know that every form and shape and combination of these elements from this plane flows from inherited tendencies having their root in the etheric world. ”

“ The eternal recipient and transmitter of this infinite energy is the ether. The recognition of the existence of ether, and of the functions it performs, is one of the most important results of modern scientific research. The mere abandoning of the idea of action at a distance, the assumption of a medium pervading all space and connecting all gross matter, has freed the minds of thinkers of an ever present doubt, and, by opening a new horizon—new and unforeseen possibilities—has given fresh interest to phenomena with which we are familiar of old. ”

“ The imponderability of the Ether can also be conceived by analogy with the atmosphere. Every man, knowing nothing of it, carries upon his shoulders a column of air sixty miles high and weighing many tons. In calm weather the very presence of this voluminous vapour is unfelt: it is only when the wind rises that we know how heavy its hand can be. Thus a poetical or concrete conception of the Ether is not negatived by that which it is not. ”

“ From the present state of theory it looks as if the electromagnetic field, as opposed to the gravitational field, rests upon an entirely new formal motif, as though nature might just as well have endowed the gravitational ether with fields of quite another type, for example, with fields of a scalar potential, instead of fields of the electromagnetic type.
Since according to our present conceptions the elementary particles of matter are also, in their essence, nothing else than condensations of the electromagnetic field, our present view of the universe presents two realities which are completely separated from each other conceptually, although connected causally, namely, gravitational ether and electromagnetic field, or — as they might also be called — space and matter. ”

“ It will be remembered that I have myself assumed what we may term an ether. I have spoken of a subtle influence which we know to be ever in attendance upon matter, although becoming manifest only through matter's heterogeneity. To this influence—without daring to touch it at all in any effort at explaining its awful nature—I have referred the various phænomena of electricity, heat, light, magnetism; and more—of vitality, consciousness, and thought—in a word, of spirituality. It will be seen, at once, then, that the ether thus conceived is radically distinct from the ether of the astronomers ”

“ I myself, indeed, have designed and carried out a series of delicate experiments to see whether a whirling mass of iron could to the smallest extent grip the ether and carry it round, with so much as a thousandth part of its own velocity. These shall be described further on, but meanwhile the result arrived at is distinct. The answer is, no; I cannot find a trace of mechanical connection between matter and ether, of the kind known as viscosity or friction. ”

“ The power of the ether in the rapid transmission of undulations seems to attain its limit in the propagation of light and heat and electricity at the rate of nearly 200,000 miles per second. How the ether can act so as to serve as a medium of communication between bodies at all distances, transmitting impressions 10,000,000 times faster, at least, than light travels, nothing at present known to us enables us to say. I have, in a lecture which I gave in America upon the mysteries of the universe, indicated a way in which gravity may be conceived to be generated and transmitted ”

“ Space is full' not of matter, but of ether. The ether is other than matter; and it fills all space in the most thorough manner: there is nothing no omnipresent and no efficient in the physical universe.
We employ the ether every day and every minute of our lives; it is the very breath of our material existence but it escapes what are called our five waves, and on we usually know little about it. ”

“ Just as the parts of the cord in the knot act upon one another in a way in which they could not act if they remained in one continuous line, so the knotted or twisted ether becomes capable of a great variety of interactions which are not possible to it in its original state, and as the knots increase in complexity these possible interactions are multiplied. The motion by which the first agglomeration of ether is formed generates the various processes which are known to you as heat, magnetism, electricity, and the different chemical affinities, and so the matter of your world is built up. ”

“ It is true that the notion of the ether has been abandoned by some modern physicists, but, whether or not it is ultimately dispensed with, the conception of the ether has entered so deeply into the scientific mind that the science of physics cannot be understood unless we know something about the properties attributed to the ether. The ether was invented to explain the phenomena of light, and to account for the flow of energy across empty space. Light takes time to travel. We see the sun at any moment by the light that left it 8 minutes before. ”

“ The Ether a Material Substance, proved by its Behaviour. We have said in a former part of this work, pages 153 and following, that if the ether is capable of performing all the functions that are attributed to it, it must have some consistence or substance of some kind; that it must be matter of some kind in some form, and consequently must have density in some degree however low; and we might, for the same reasons, suppose that it must have some temperature; but as long as we believe that without motion there can be no heat, we cannot conceive it to have any temperature. ”

“ The ether has two hundred or more elementary substances, each atom of our eighty or ninety "elements" being the chemical union of great masses of two or more of the etheric elements or their combinations. These etheric elementary substances combine and unite; our elementary substances simply following in their combinations the law which they inherit from their parents. They take form and shape. They vibrate through one octave, and take solid liquid or gaseous form in ether, as their types here in our world take it in prakriti, as their vibrations are increased or diminished. ”

“ Only where life is present as an inherent principle - that is, in plant, animal and man - is ether at work in the form of an individual etheric organization, while the mineral is formed by the universal ether from outside. Where life prevails, we are met by the phenomena of birth and death. When a living organism comes to birth, an individual ether-body is formed out of the general etheric substance of the universe.1 The death of such an organism consists in the separation of the etheric from the physical body and the dissolution of both in their respective mother-realms. ”

“ That the power which accomplishes these actions does not reside in matter alone, but resides also in the ether system—is, in fact, a function of that system regarded as including both ether and matter—seems to be increasingly pointed to by the trend of recent physical research. Basing our final conjecture, therefore, on generalization from a wide array of facts, it may not be premature to look to the ether system, not only for an illustration on the widest scale of the law of assimilation, but also for the ultimate source of all the phenomena in which the operation of that law can be traced. ”

“ Radio waves, all scientists admit, are propagated through the ether.
"And what," Fradin countered, "is the ether?"
"Why—" Ramsen answered. "It's—" He started to flounder. A sudden silence fell in the room. Ramsen's face started to get red. "The ether," he finished, "is—why it's the ether, that's what it is."
"What you are refusing to admit," Fradin crowed, "is that 'ether' is a meaningless word invented by numbskulls such as are gathered here to describe something about which they know absolutely nothing. The ether is a word, nothing more. It does not exist. ”

“ Professor Fitzgerald closes one of his lectures on ether in these words:—“There are metaphysical grounds for reducing matter to motion, and potential to kinetic energy. Let us for a moment contemplate what is betokened by this theory that in electro-magnetic engines we are using as our mechanism the ether, the medium that fills all known space. It was a great step in human progress when man learnt to make material machines, when he used the elasticity of his bow, and the rigidity of his arrow to provide food and defeat his enemies. ”

“ For the existence of the ether is not based only on the phenomena of light: it is an equally necessary postulate to explain those of heat, electricity, and chemical action. We must conceive of our atoms and molecules as forming systems and performing their movements, not in vacuo, but in an all-pervading medium of this ether, to which they impart, and from which they receive, impulses. ”

“ The fumes of ether have an odd effect on me. They turn me into a "don't care" sort of person without conscience and without fear. No wonder some nations give soldiers a dash of ether in their drink, when they have to go "over the top!" I could go, and feel no sense of danger, even though my reason knew that it existed.
So it was while I waited for the messenger from our mean [Pg 35] little hotel to come back from the magnificent Ritz. Would he suddenly dash my sinful hopes by saying, "Pas de réponse, Mademoiselle"; or would he bring me a letter from Father and Mother Beckett? ”

“ Ether is the medium of transmission of light, that which etches a picture on the photographic film. It permeates the air, and with every breath we draw from birth to death ether enters our system and etches a picture of our surroundings and actions on a little atom in the heart. ”

“ If we take this as the true explanation for the Physical Universe, we are met with something quite beyond our powers of comprehension, when we try to form a conception of the all-pervading Ether; unless we may look upon [Pg 103] it as actually a presentation of the Reality itself. If we wave our hand, we can feel the obstruction of the air, but we cannot feel the Ether. We think our earth very solid, and we know it is rushing round the sun at the enormous rate of 60,000 miles per hour, but it finds no obstruction in the Ether, there is no retardation of its velocity ”

“ Ether, or Æther, sometimes called luminiferous ether to prevent confusion with the well-known volatile liquid of the same name, a hypothetical medium filling the whole of what seems to be empty space, and even the interstices between the atoms of material bodies. Most thinkers believe that such a medium must be postulated if we are to explain the transmission of physical actions between bodies at a distance from one another. With the exception of ordinary mechanical pressures and tensions, the simplest examples of influences that can pass across space are sound and light. ”

“ The line of ether from the sun is vibrating faster than the ether in the body, but the higher impels the lower, the greater controls the lesser, and soon both ethers are in unison. The physical atoms must coincide in vibration with their etheric envelopes, and the "note" is "heat." Step into the shade, where the ocean of ether is vibrating more slowly, and the ether of the body reduces its vibration. "The ether is the origin of all force and of all phenomena." ”

“ Electrical and optical effects depend upon e. Mechanical or inertia effects depend upon e2. Electric charges can load the ether optically, quite appreciably; but as regards mechanical loading, the densest matter known is trivial and gossamer-like compared with the unmodified ether in the same space.
Massiveness of the Ether deduced from Electrical
Principles.
Each electron, moving like a sphere through a fluid, has a certain mass associated with it; dependent on its size, and, at very high speeds, on its velocity also. ”