ing with a medium composed of atoms, which can
give rise to pressures and tensions, or repulsions and attractions from
any one part of space to another.

If we can prove that an atomic Aether can give rise to these pressures
and tensions from one body to another, and those pressures and tensions
harmonize with, and satisfactorily account for, the phenomena sought to
be explained, then we shall have succeeded in making our philosophy
agree with our experience, and such a result as action at a distance
will for ever disappear from the mental conception of all men, as it has
long disappeared from the pages of philosophical and scientific works,
though that disappearance was not accompanied with a satisfactory
solution of the problem.

Let us, therefore, consider these pressures and tensions, or so-called
repulsions and attractions that exist in this electro-magnetic Aether
from the atomic standpoint, and by so doing try to realize how it is
that one body, as the sun, acts upon another body, as the earth, through
the intervening medium, the Aether. We can either consider it from the
material standpoint, that is, by considering the Aether as matter, pure
and simple, or by viewing it from the electrical standpoint, which may
be considered from Clerk Maxwell's physical conception of an electric
field. We will briefly consider it from the latter standpoint. Our
conception of an aetherial atom was that of a spherical vortex atom
possessing polarity and rotation on an axis. We must, however, make the
distinction between the two kinds of aetherial atoms that Clerk Maxwell
first indicated in his paper on Physical Lines of Force, _Phil. Mag._,
1861, and that Dr. Larmor has worked out in his _Aether and Matter_ from
the electron standpoint, viz. that the Aether is composed of positive
and negative electrons. Or we can accept Professor Lodge's theory, that
Aether is made up of positive and negative electricity. We are compelled
to accept the hypothesis of two kinds of aetherial or electrical atoms,
whatever they may be called, in view of the teaching of electricity,
that positive and negative electricity are always to be found in
association, and in combination, wherever electricity exists. We have
proved that electricity is to be found throughout the realm of space
(Art. 78); therefore in all planetary and stellar regions electricity is
present. Thus it exists in the so-called space between the sun and
planets, and between the plane