Inhaltsangabe
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1855 Excerpt: ...that Nature has bestowed on the matter she has created, this optical capacity? Do we know that ordinary matter wants this capacity? or do we know that an additional ether is required? Are we ignorant concerning ordinary matter? or are we learned concerning subtile ethers? We can only be justified in assuming an ether when all the possible capabilities of ordinary matter are known to be fruitlessly exhausted. And do we possess this knowledge? Certainly, if ordinary matter embrace the capacity of taking a form sufficiently attenuated for vision, you would never resort to the expedient of an extraordinary ether. We do not, indeed, know that matter is capable of infinite attenuation; but the fact that we do not know that it is not, shows that it may assume a very superlative degree of attenuation. And it is only a high degree of attenuation in matter that vision requires--not a specific ether; you cannot, therefore, assert that ordinary matter is not capable of the attenuation requisite to optical phenomena; and all the analogies of sensation and transmutation affirm that it is. So that the case stands thus:--Of the existence of ordinary matter we are certain. Experimentally, we are also certain of its being capable of a degree of attenuation, under which it becomes inappreciable. It is only in a logical point of view that an ether can be contemplated, since it is a medium, but not a sensible object. It may be an object of reason, but not of perception. And this seems to be the metaphysical reason why the medium of vision has been regarded as something different in essence from those forms of matter whose objective existence it serves to reveal, while itself being the highest medium of perception, cannot mediately come under sensible scrutiny. But in this logic...
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