the supposition that the ether may be something essentially
different from matter is contradicted by all the terms we have
used in describing it. Strange and contradictory as its
properties may seem, are they any more strange than the
properties of a gas would seem if we were for the first time to
discover a gas after heretofore knowing nothing but solids and
liquids? I think not; and the conclusion implied by our authors
seems to me eminently probable, that in the so-called ether we
have simply a state of matter more primitive than what we know as
the gaseous state. Indeed, the conceptions of matter now current,
and inherited from barbarous ages, are likely enough to be crude
in the extreme. It is not strange that the study of such subtle
agencies as heat and light should oblige us to modify them; and
it will not be strange if the study of electricity should entail
still further revision of our ideas.

We are now brought to one of the profoundest speculations of
modern times, the vortex-atom theory of Helmholtz and Thomson, in
which the evolution of ordinary matter from ether is plainly
indicated. The reader first needs to know what vortex-motion is;
and this has been so beautifully explained by Professor Clifford,
that I quote his description entire: "Imagine a ring of
india-rubber, made by joining together the ends of a cylindrical
piece (like a lead-pencil before it is cut), to be put upon a
round stick which it will just fit with a little stretching. Let
the stick be now pulled through the ring while the latter is kept
in its place by being pulled the other way on the outside. The
india-rubber has then what is called vortex-motion. Before the
ends were joined together, while it was straight, it might have
been made to turn around without changing position, by rolling it