there be, are so small that no sensible substance can be made sufficiently dense to resist it or confine it. It is easy to see that a substance possessing such qualities cannot be weighed or in any way made appreciable to our senses. But from the fact that radiant energy can be transmitted through it, with vibrations amounting to billions per second, we know that it must be a substance with elastic qualities that approach the infinite. Assuming that the ether is a substance, the question arises how is it related to other forms of substance? This is a question more easily asked than answered. The longer one dwells upon the subject, however, the more one is impressed with the thought that after all the ether may be the one element out of which all other elements come.
Chemistry tells us that there are between sixty and seventy ultimate elements. This is true at least as a basis for chemical science. Chemical analysis has never been able to make gold anything but gold, or oxygen anything but oxygen, and so on through the whole catalogue of elements. It may be, however, that the play of forces under and beyond those that seem to be active in all chemical processes and relations, are able to produce certain affections of the ether, the result of which in the one case is an atom of gold and in the other an atom of oxygen, etc., to the end of the list. In this case all of the so-called elements may have their origin in one fundamental element that we call the ether. I am aware that we are wading in deep water here, but sometimes we love to get into deep water just to try our swimming powers. The above is a suggestion of a theory called "the vortex theory," that is taking root in the minds of many philosophers to-day, and yet there is almost nothing of known facts to base such a theory upon, and nearly all we can say about it is that it seems plausible, when viewed through the eye of imagination.
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