er would remain and all the energy embodied in
the atoms would be still in existence in the ether. The atomic energy
would simply be dissolved. One can easily conceive the ether as the same
space-filling, continuous, unlimited medium, without an atom in it. On
this assumption it is clear that no form of energy with which we have to
deal in physical science would have any existence in the ether; for
every one of those forms, gravitational, thermal, electric, magnetic, or
any other--all are the results of the forms of energy in matter. If
there were no atoms, there would be no gravitation, for that is the
attraction of atoms upon each other. If there were no atoms, there could
be no atomic vibration, therefore no heat, and so on for each and all.
Nevertheless, if an atom be the embodiment of energy, there must have
been energy in the ether before any atom existed. One of the properties
of the ether is its ability to distribute energy in certain ways, but
there is no evidence that of itself it ever transforms energy. Once a
given kind of energy is in it, it does not change; hence for the
apparition of a form of energy, like the first vortex-ring, there must
have been not only energy, but some other agency capable of transforming
that energy into a permanent structure. To the best of our knowledge
to-day, the ether would be absolutely helpless. Such energy as was
active in forming atoms must be called by another name than what is
appropriate for such transformations as occur when, for instance, the
mechanical energy of a bullet is transformed into heat when the target
is struck. Behind the ether must be assumed some agency, directing and
controlling energy in a manner totally different from any agency, which
is operative in what we call physical science. Nothing short of what is
called a miracle will do--an event without a physical antecedent in any
way necessarily related to its factors, as is the fact of a stone
related to gravity or heat to an electric current.

Ether energy is an endowment instead of being an embodiment, and implies
antecedents of a super-physical kind.

12. MATTER IS AN ENERGY TRANSFORMER.

As each different kind of energy represents some specific form of
motion, and _vice versa_, some sort of mechanism is needful for
transforming one kind into another, therefore molecular structure of
one kind or another is essential. The transformation is a mechanical
process, and matter in some particular and ap