Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/787

Rh five miles in height, such a pressure would represent just such an homogeneous atmosphere five and a half billions of miles high, or about one third the distance to the nearest fixed star! In Herschel's own words, "Do what we will, adopt what hypothesis we please, there is no escape, in dealing with the phenomena of light, from these gigantic numbers, or from the conception of enormous physical force in perpetual exertion at every point throughout all the immensity of space."

Now, as Preston has suggested, if we regard this ether as a gas, defined by the kinetic theory that its molecules move in straight lines, but with an enormous length of free path, it is obvious that this ether may be clearly conceived of as the source of all the motions of ordinary matter. It is an enormous storehouse of energy, which is continually passing to and from ordinary matter, precisely as we know it to do in the case of radiant transmission. Before so simple a conception as this, both potential energy and action at a distance are easily given up. All energy is kinetic energy, the energy of motion. In a narrower sense, the energy of matter-motion is ordinary kinetic energy; the energy of ether-motion, which may become matter-motion, fills the conception of the older potential energy. Giving now to the ether its storehouse of tremendous power, and giving to it the ability to transfer this power to ordinary matter upon opportunity, and we have an environment compared with which the strongest steel is but the breath of the summer air. In presence of such an energy it is that we live and move; in the midst of such tremendous power do we act. Is it a wonder that out of such a reservoir the power by which we live should irresistibly rush into the organism and appear as the transmuted energy which we recognize in the phenomena of life? Truly, as Spinoza has put it, "Man thinks himself most free when he is most a slave."

Such, now, are some of the facts and fancies to be found in the science of to-day concerning the phenomena of life. Physiologically considered, life has no mysterious passages, no sacred precincts into which the unhallowed foot of Science may not enter. Research has steadily diminished day by day the phenomena supposed vital. Physiology is daily assuming more and more the character of an applied science. Every action performed by the living body is sooner or later to be pronounced chemical or physical. And when the last vestige of the vital principle shall disappear, the word "Life," if it remain at all, will remain to us only to signify, as a collective term, the sum of the phenomena exhibited by an active organized or organic being.

I can not close without speaking a single word in favor of a vigorous development in this country of physiological research. What has already been done among us has been well done. I have said with diffidence what I have said in this address, because I see around me those who have made these subjects the study of their lives, and who