energies there are that can act
upon the nerves. Touch, taste, and smell imply contact, sound has
greater range, and sight has the immensity of the universe for its
field. The most distant but visible star acts through the optic nerve to
present itself to consciousness. It is not the ego that looks out
through the eyes, but it is the universe that pours in upon the ego.

Again, all the known agencies that act upon the nerves, whether for
touch or sound or sight, imply matter in some of its forms and
activities, to adapt the energy to the nervous system. The mechanism
for the perception of light is complicated. The light acts upon a
sensitive surface where molecular structure is broken up, and this
disturbance is in the presence of nerve terminals, and the sensation is
not in the eye but in the sensorium. In like manner for all the rest; so
one may fairly say that matter is the condition for sensation, and in
its absence there would be nothing we call sensation.

THE ETHER IS INSENSIBLE TO NERVES.

The ether is in great contrast with matter in this particular. There is
no evidence that in any direct way it acts upon any part of the nervous
system, or upon the mind. It is probable that this lack of relation
between the ether and the nervous system was the chief reason why its
discovery was so long delayed, as the mechanical necessities for it even
now are felt only by such as recognize continuity as a condition for the
transmission of energy of whatever kind it may be. Action at a distance
contradicts all experience, is philosophically incredible, and is
repudiated by every one who once perceives that energy has two
factors--substance and motion.

The table given below presents a list of twenty-two of the known
properties of matter contrasted with those exhibited by the ether. In
none of them are the properties of the two identical, and in most of
them what is true for one is not true for the other. They are not simply
different, they are incomparable.

From the necessities of the case, as knowledge has been acquired and
terminology became essential for making distinctions, the ether has been
described in terms applicable to matter, hence such terms as mass,
solidity, elasticity, density, rigidity, etc., which have a definite
meaning and convey definite mechanical conceptions when applied to
matter, but have no corresponding meaning and convey no such mechanical
conceptions when applied to the ether. It is certain