Monism as Connecting Religion and Science | Page 5

all this we have not as yet obtained
any further light as to the real nature of these original atoms or their

primal energies.
A number of the acutest thinkers have, so far in vain, endeavoured to
grapple more closely with this fundamental problem of the philosophy
of nature, and to determine more exactly the nature of atoms as well as
their relation to the space-filling ether. And the idea steadily gains
ground that no such thing as empty space exists, and that everywhere
the primitive atoms of ponderable matter or heavy "mass" are separated
from each other by the homogeneous ether which extends throughout
all space. This extremely light and attenuated (if not imponderable)
ether causes, by its vibrations, all the phenomena of light and heat,
electricity and magnetism. We can imagine it either as a continuous
substance occupying the space between the mass-atoms, or as
composed of separate particles; in the latter case we might perhaps
attribute to these ether-atoms an inherent power of repulsion in contrast
to the immanent attracting power of the heavy mass-atoms, and the
whole mechanism of cosmic life would then be reducible to the
attraction of the latter and the repulsion of the former. We might also
place the "vibrations of the cosmic ether" alongside of the "operation of
space in general," in the sense in which these words are used by
Professor Schlesinger.
At any rate, theoretical physics has in recent years made an advance of
fundamental importance and widest reach in our knowledge of nature,
in that it has come nearer to a knowledge of this cosmic ether, and has
forced the question of its essence, its structure, and its motion into the
foreground of monistic nature-philosophy. Only a few years ago the
cosmic ether was to the majority of scientists an imponderable
something, of which, strictly speaking, absolutely nothing was known,
and which could be admitted provisionally only as a precarious
working hypothesis. All this was changed when Heinrich Hertz (1888)
demonstrated the nature of electrical energy, by his beautiful
experiments establishing the conjecture of Faraday that light and heat,
electricity and magnetism, are closely related phenomena of one single
set of forces, and depend on transverse vibrations of the ether. Light
itself--whatever else it be--is always and everywhere an electrical
phenomenon. The ether itself is no longer hypothetical; its existence
can at any moment be demonstrated by electrical and optical
experiment. We know the length of the light wave and the electric wave.

Indeed, some physicists believe that they can even determine
approximately the density of ether. If by means of the airpump we
remove from a bell-jar the atmospheric air (except an insignificant
residue), the quantity of light within it remains unchanged; it is the
vibrating ether we see.[9] These advances in our knowledge of the
ether mean an immense gain for monistic philosophy. For they do away
with the erroneous ideas of empty space and _actio in distans_; the
whole of infinite space, in so far as it is not occupied by mass-atoms
("ponderable matter"), is filled by the ether. Our ideas of space and
time are quite other than those taught by Kant a hundred years ago; the
"critical" system of the great Koenigsberg philosopher exhibits in this
respect, as well as in his teleological view of the organic world and in
his metaphysics, dogmatic weaknesses of the most pronounced kind.[8]
And religion itself, in its reasonable forms, can take over the ether
theory as an article of faith, bringing into contradistinction the mobile
cosmic ether as creating divinity, and the inert heavy mass as material
of creation.[11] From this successfully scaled height of monistic
knowledge there open up before our joyously quickened spirit of
research and discovery new and surprising prospects, which promise to
bring us still nearer to the solution of the one great riddle of the world.
What is the relation of this light mobile cosmic ether to the heavy inert
"mass," to the ponderable matter which we chemically investigate, and
which we can only think of as constituted of atoms? Our modern
analytical chemistry remains for the present at a standstill, in presence
of some seventy irreducible elements, or so-called primary substances.
But the reciprocal relation of these elements, the affinity of their
combinations, their spectroscopic behaviour, and so forth, make it in
the highest degree probable that they are all merely historical products
of an evolutionary process, having their origin in various dispositions
and combinations of a varying number of original atoms.
To these original or mass-atoms--the ultimate discrete particles of inert
"ponderable matter"--we can with more or less probability ascribe a
number of eternal and inalienable fundamental attributes; they are
probably everywhere in space, of like magnitude and constitution.
Although possessing a definite finite magnitude, they are, by virtue of
their very