space." So rare and fine is this
matter that it interpenetrates carbon or steel as water
interpenetrates a sponge, or ink a blotting pad. In fact, each
atom of "physical" matter--by which is meant matter in the first
condition--floats in an atmosphere of ether as the solid earth
floats in its atmosphere of air.

"No two physical atoms touch," said Faraday. "Each physical atom
is the centre of an etheric molecule, and as far apart from every
other atom as the stars in heaven from one another." This is
true of every form of physical matter, whether it is a lump of
metal, a cup of liquid, or a flask of gas; whether it is a
bronze statue or a living man; a leaf, a cloud, or the earth
itself. Each and every physical atom is the centre of an etheric
molecule made up of many atoms of the ether.

This duality of matter was a wonderful discovery, revolutionizing
every department of science. It placed man in actual touch with
the whole visible universe. The ether in a man's eye (and in his
whole body) reaches in one unbroken line--like a telegraph wire
--from him to the sun, or the outermost planet. He is not
separate and apart from "space," but a part of it. Each physical
atom of his physical body is the centre of an etheric molecule,
and he has two bodies, as St. Paul said, a visible physical and
an invisible etheric body; the latter in actual touch with the
whole universe.

Faraday went one step further. He demonstrated that all
physical phenomena come from the chording vibration of the
physical atom with the surrounding etheric atoms, and that the
latter exercise the impelling force on the former. Step into the
sunshine. The line of ether from the sun is vibrating faster
than the ether in the body, but the higher impels the lower, the
greater controls the lesser, and soon both ethers are in unison.
The physical atoms must coincide in vibration with their etheric
envelopes, and the "note" is "heat." Step into the shade, where
the ocean of ether is vibrating more slowly, and the ether of the
body reduces its vibration. "The ether is the origin of all
force and of all phenomena."

This etheric matter follows identical laws with prakritic matter,
or, accurately, the laws of our matter flow from the etheric
matter from which it is made. The ether has two hundred or more
elementary substances, each atom of our eighty or ninety
"elements" being the chemical union of great masses of two or
more of the ether