notion of the "grossness" or "bruteness" of tangible matter,--a
notion which has survived in Christian theology, and which
educated men of the present day have by no means universally
outgrown. Save for some such old associations as these, why
should it be supposed that matter becomes "spriritualized" as it
diminishes in apparent substantiality? Why should matter be
pronounced respectable in the inverse ratio of its density or
ponderability? Why is a diamond any more chargeable with
"grossness" than a cubic centimetre of hydrogen? Obviously such
fancies are purely of mythologic parentage. Now the luminiferous
ether, upon which our authors make such extensive demands, may be
physically "ethereal" enough, in spite of the enormous elasticity
which leads Professor Jevons to characterize it as "adamantine";
but most assuredly we have not the slightest reason for speaking
of it as "immaterial" or "spiritual." Though we are unable to
weigh it in the balance, we at least know it as a transmitter of
undulatory movements, the size and shape of which we can
accurately measure. Its force-relations with ponderable matter
are not only universally and incessantly maintained, but they
have that precisely quantitative character which implies an
essential identity between the innermost natures of the two
substances. We have seen reason for thinking it probable that
ether and ordinary matter are alike composed of vortex-rings in a
quasi-frictionless fluid; but whatever be the fate of this subtle
hypothesis, we may be sure that no theory will ever be
entertained in which the analysis of ether shall require
different symbols from that of ordinary matter. In our authors'
theory, therefore, the putting on of immortality is in no wise
the passage from a material to a spiritual state. It is the
passage from one kind of materially conditioned state to another.