disturbed area in the ether. It is sometimes described as "a
particle of negative electricity" and associated with "a particle
of positive electricity" in building up the atom. The phrase is
misleading for those who regard electricity as a force or energy,
and it gives rise to speculation as to whether "matter" has not
been resolved into "force." Force or energy is not conceived by
physicists as a substantial reality, like matter, but an abstract
expression of certain relations of matter or electrons.

In any case, the ether, whether solid or fluid or granular,
remains the fundamental reality. The universe does not float IN
an ocean of ether: it IS an ocean of ether. But countless myriads
of minute disturbances are found in this ocean, and set it
quivering with the various pulses which we classify as forces or
energies. These points of disturbance cluster together in systems
(atoms) of from 1000 to 250,000 members, and the atoms are
pressed together until they come in the end to form massive
worlds. It remains only to reduce gravitation itself, which
brings the atoms together, to a strain or stress in ether, and we
have a superb unity. That has not yet been done, but every theory
of gravitation assumes that it is a stress in the ether
corresponding to the formation of the minute disturbances which
we call electrons.

But, it may be urged, he who speaks of foundations speaks of a
beginning of a structure; he who speaks of evolution must have a
starting-point. Was there a time when the ether was a smooth,
continuous fluid, without electrons or atoms, and did they
gradually appear in it, like crystals in the mother-lye? In
science we know nothing of a beginning. The question of the