And what about that mysterious ether? It can neither be seen,
heard, felt, handled, smelt, nor tasted. Nevertheless, man has
learned so much about its "how" that he is turning it into as
menial a servant, obedient to his wishes, as he has made of
electricity, the cause of sublime thunder; for man bids the ether
carry his stock quotations or any other message of his to the
ends of the earth.
These are great doings, but really no greater than his small
doings, for the least of these is just as impossible for other
earthly creatures as are an Alpine tunnel or a battleship. A
large convention of chimpanzees could not combine to make one pin
or one sleeve-button, if they tried.
All this is because man is native to the world of relations,
which no other earthly beings are, because they cannot go beyond
the information provided by their bodily senses. Man, on the
contrary, gains infinitely more knowledge than his bodily senses
can afford. By studying the relations of abstract points to
abstract lines, he becomes a mathematician. Following up the many
"hows" of chemistry, he talks about molecules, atoms, and ions as
fluently as: if he had seen or handled them.