Man's next realm of conquest is the celestial ether. It has higher
powers, greater intensities, and quicker activities than any realm he
has yet attempted.
When the emissory or corpuscular theory of light had to be abandoned a
medium for light's interplay between worlds had to be conceived. The
existence of an all-pervasive medium called the luminiferous ether was
launched as a theory. Its reality has been so far demonstrated that
but very few doubters remain.
What facts of its conditions and powers can be known? It differs
almost totally from our conceptions of matter. Of the eighteen
necessary properties of matter perhaps only one, extension, can be
predicated of it. It is unlimited, all-pervasive; even where worlds
are non-attractive, does not accumulate about suns or other bodies; has
no structure, chemical relations, nor inertia; is not heatable, and is
not cognizable by any of our present senses. Does it not take us one
step toward an apprehension of the revealed condition of spirit?
Recall its actual activities. Two hundred and fifty-eight vibrations
of air per second produce on the ear the sensation we call _do_, or _C_
of the soprano scale; five hundred and sixteen give the upper _C_, or
an octave above. So the sound runs up in air till, above, say,
thirty-five thousand vibrations per second, there is plenty of sound
inaudible to our ears. But not inaudible to finer ears. To them the
morning stars sing together in mighty chorus:
"Forever singing as they shine,
'The hand that made us is divine.'"
Electricity has as great a variety of vibrations as sound. Since some
kinds of electricity do not readily pass through space devoid of air,
though light and heat do, it seems likely that some of the lower
intensities and slower vibrations of electricity are not in ether but
in air. Certainly some of the higher intensities are in ether.
Between two hundred and four hundred millions of millions of vibrations
of ether per second are the different sorts of heat. Between four
hundred and eight hundred vibrations are the different colors of light.
Beyond eight hundred vibrations there is plenty of light, invisible to
our eyes, known as chemical rays and probably the Roentgen rays.
Beyond these are there vibrations for thought-transference? Who
knoweth?
These familiar facts are called up to show the almost infinite
capacities and intensities of the ether. Matter is more forceful, as
it is less dense. Rock is solid, and has little force except obstinate
resistance. Steam is rarer and more forceful. Gases suddenly born of
dynamite touched by fire in the rock under a mountain have the
tremendous pressure of eighty thousand pounds to the square inch.
Ether is so rare that its density, compared with water, is represented
by a decimal fraction with twenty-seven ciphers before it.
When the worlds navigate this sea, do they plow through it as a ship
through the waves, forcing them aside, or as a sieve letting the water
through it? Doubtless the sieve is the better symbol. Certainly the
vibrations flow through solid glass and most solid diamond. To be
sure, they are a little hampered by the solid substance. The speed of
light is reduced from one hundred and eighty thousand miles a second in
space to one hundred and twenty thousand in glass. If ether can so
readily go through such solids, no wonder that a spirit body could
appear to the disciples, "the doors being shut."
Marvelous discoveries in the capacities of ether have been made lately.
In 1842 Joseph Henry found that electric waves in the top of his house
provoked action in a wire circuit in the cellar, through two floors and
ceilings, without wire connections. More than twenty years ago
Professor Loomis, of the United States coast survey, telegraphed twenty
miles between mountains by electric impulses sent from kites. Last
year Mr. Preece, the cable being broken, sent, without wires, one
hundred and fifty-six messages between the mainland and the island of
Mull, a distance of four and a half miles. Marconi, an Italian, has
sent recognizable signals through seven or eight thick walls of the
London post-office, and three fourths of a mile through a hill.
Jagadis Chunder Bose, of India, has fired a pistol by an electric
vibration seventy-five feet away and through more than four feet of
masonry. Since brick does not elastically vibrate to such
infinitesimal impulses as electric waves, ether must. It has already
been proven that one can telegraph to a flying train from the overhead
wires. Ether is a far better medium of transmission than iron. A wire
will now carry eight messages each way, at the same time, without
interference. What will not the more facile ether do?
Such are some of the first vague suggestions of a realm of power and
knowledge not yet explored. They are mere auroral hints of a new dawn.
The full day is yet to shine.
Like timid children, we have peered into the schoolhouse--afraid of the
unknown master. If we will but enter we shall find that the Master is
our Father, and that he has fitted up this house, out of his own
infinite wisdom, skill, and love, that we may be like him in wisdom and
power as well as in love.