THE TRANSITORY NATURE OF MATTER.*
EVERY thoughtful man, be he gifted with a turn for scientific inquiry or not, must be deeply interested in the modern views
of the relation between ether, matter, and energy, which the research of the last decade has so wonderfully advanced.
Our inv'estigations have been pushed, by a distinguished group of physicists, far beyond the limits which were set to them only a few years ago. We are now able to see into the interior structure of the so-called atoms of Dalton, which held the field for nearly a century as the ultimate constituents of what we call matter, and we have reached a point at which the fundamental structure of our universe may be said to be well within the reach of practical investigation. It is highly probable that the seventy-odd elements of the chemist will turn out to be all modifications of some more primitive " ur-stoff," and that this prima mat eria itself is a modification of what we have long known, under the name of ether, as a concept of the advanced school of physicists. The exact relation between ether, electricity, and matter is still some- what in doubt, but that there is a very close relation has been definitely proved. In a chapter on modern views of the ether which Sir Oliver Lodge has added to the new edition of his well-known book—last published sixteen years ago—be summarises the present state of our fundamental hypothesis as follows :—
" Throughout the greater part of space we find simple unmodi- fied ether, elastic and massive, squirming and quivering with energy, but stationary as a whole. Here and there, however, we find specks of electrified ether, isolated yet connected together by fields of force, and in a state of violent locomotion. These 'specks' are what, in the form of prodigious aggregates, we know as matter '; and the greater number of sensible phenomena, such as viscosity, heat, sound, electric conduction, absorption and emission of light, belong to these differentiated or indi- vidualised and dissociated or electrified specks, which are either flying alone or are revolving with orbital motion in groups. The 'matter' so constituted—built up of these well-separated particles, with interstices enormous in proportion to the size of the specks—must be an excessively porous or gossamer-like structure, like a cobweb, a milky way, or a comet's tail; and the inertia of matter—that is, the combined inertia of a group of electrified ether particles—must be a mere residual fraction of the mass of the main bulk of undifferentiated continuous fluid occupying the same space ; of which fluid the particles are hypothetically composed, and in which they freely move."
In other words, all space is filled with a vast ocean of ether,—probably more dense and rigid than steel or any other material known to us, although it is absolutely indiscernible by our ordinary senses, and does not present the slightest
obstacle to the motion of massive bodies like the planets. What we call matter is simply a phenomenon due to the existence of certain internal motions in this ether—waves or
whirlpools, so to speak—which shows how right Montaigne was when he spoke of man as "divers et ondoyant." Matter
is thus differentiated ether, and it becomes possible to conceive of its creation or destruction by a change in the distribu- tion of energy in the ether. If a stationary portion of the circuma.mbient ether can, by any external force, be suddenly thrown into a state of motion, a particle of matter is thereby created; whilst if in the lapse of ages that motion ceases, the same particle of matter is annihilated, in the ordinary sense of the word. It is needless to point out that an entire revolution in our ideas of matter follows upon this conception, which is no mere hypothesis, but the conclusion drawn by the most eminent physicists from certain minute inquiries into the behaviour of matter under rare but now well-known conditions,—for instance, in the atom of radium and other unstable elements. Sir Oliver Lodge gives an admirably lucid and up-to-date account of the lines of thought which have converged on this remarkable discovery, and of the practical conclusions which spring from it, and his book should be in the hands of all who care about understanding the latest achievements of science.
* Modern Vines of Electricity. By Sir Oliver Lodge. Third Edition, Barbed London : Macmillan and Co. [6e.]
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