What a Teacher Should Teach

Let us suppose that a certain wise teacher of physics places a row of Bunsen burners under a long steel bar having a Daniell's pyrometer at one end, and addresses his class (substantially) as follows:

"At our last lecture we found that the matter of the universe permeated all space, but in two conditions, which we agreed to call physical and etheric, or tangible and intangible. It is all the same matter, subject to the same laws, but differing in the rate of vibration, the physical matter vibrating through one great octave or plane, and the etheric vibrating through another great octave or plane one degree higher—the chording vibration of the matter of the two planes in one note producing what we call energy or force, and with it phenomena.

"This is a bar of steel 36 inches long. It is composed of physical atoms but no two physical atoms touch. Each physical atom is as far apart from every other atom as the stars in heaven from one another—in proportion to their size. The atoms and the spaces between them are so small to our sight that they seem to touch. If we had a microscope of sufficient power to reveal the atom, you would see that no two atoms touch, and that the spaces between them are, as Faraday says, very great in proportion to their size. I showed you last term that what appeared to be a solid stream of water, when magnified and thrown upon a screen, was merely a succession of independent drops that did not touch. I can not yet give you proof of the bar of iron being composed of independent atoms, but that is the fault of our instruments, and you must take my word for it until the proof is simplified and made easy of application.

"Each one of these physical atoms is a miniature world. It is the center of an ocean of ether, composed of many atoms; and while no two physical atoms touch, their etheric atmospheres do touch, and any change in the vibration of the etheric atmosphere of one will be imparted to that of the next. As the vibration of the physical atom must be in harmony with that of its etheric atmosphere, any change coming to one will be imparted to the next, and the next, through the ether surrounding them.

"You can see that the index at the end of the bar has moved, showing that it is now longer. That means the etheric atoms are now vibrating faster, taking more space, and have necessarily forced each physical atom farther apart. The bar is not only longer, but softer, and as the vibrations increase in rapidity the time will come when it will bend by its own weight, and even when it will become a liquid and a gas.

"If you put your hand anywhere near the bar you will feel a sensation called heat, and say it has become hot. The reason for that is that you are in actual and literal touch with the bar or iron through the ether. It is not alone each atom of the bar of iron that is surrounded by the ether, but each atom of the air, and each atom of your body. Their etheric atmospheres are all touching, and the increase in the vibration of the ether surrounding the atoms of iron is imparted to those of the air surrounding it, and these in turn raise the rate of vibration in the etheric atoms surrounding the physical atoms of your hand. This rate of vibration in your nerves causes a sensation, or mental impression, you call "heat." Consciousness of it comes through your sense of touch; but after all it is merely a "rate of vibration" which your brain recognizes and names.

"The bar has now reached a temperature of about 700 degrees, and has become a dull red. Why do you say the color has changed, and why do you say red?

"Because the rate of vibration of the etheric atoms in the bar is now about 412 trillions per second, and this rate of vibration having been imparted to the ether of the air, has in turn been imparted to the ether of your eye, and this rate of vibration in the ether of the nerves of your eye your brain recognizes and calls 'red.'

"The heat still continues and increases. You now have both heat and light. So you see that the ether is not vibrating in a single note, but in two chording notes, producing light and heat. There are two kinds of ether around the iron atom. There is sound also, but the note is too high for one's ears. It is a chord of three notes.

"Professor Silliman, of Yale, discovered over twenty years ago, that the ether could be differentiated into the luminiferous, or light ether, and the sonoriferous, or sound ether.

"Other great scientists since then have found a third ether—the heat ether.

"Their discoveries show that the atmospheric etheric envelope of each etheric atom is made up of etheric atoms of different vibratory powers. As the atmosphere of the earth is made up of atoms of oxygen and nitrogen and argon, so that of an atom is made up of three kinds of ethers, corresponding to three of our senses. That it consists of five ethers, corresponding to our five senses, as the ancient Hindus assert—who can say?

"I mention this subject of the differentiation of the ether merely that you may not suppose that the ether is a simple substance. For the present we will treat it as a simple substance, but next year we will take it up as a compound one.

"This steel bar before you is not one bar, but two bars. There is a visible bar and an invisible bar, the visible bar being made of physical atoms, and the invisible bar of etheric atoms. The etheric bar is invisible, but it is made of matter, the same as the visible bar, and it is just as real, just as truly a bar as the one we see.

"More than this. The etheric, invisible bar is the source and cause of all phenomena connected with the bar. It is the real bar, and the one we see is merely the shadow in physical matter of a real bar. In shape, strength, color, in short, in everything, it depends on the invisible one. The invisible dominates, governs, disposes. The visible is merely its attendant shadow, changing as the invisible, etheric bar changes, and recording for our senses these invisible changes.

"The invisible change always comes first; the invisible phenomena invariably precede the visible.

"In all this physical world—in all this universe—there is nothing, not even a grain of sand or an atom of hydrogen, that is not as this bar of iron is—the shadow cast on a visible world by the unknown and mysterious work of an invisible world.

"Land or water, mountain or lake, man or beast, bird or reptile, cold or heat, light or darkness, all are the reflection in physical matter of the true and real thing in the invisible and intangible world about us. "If we have a visible body we have an invisible one also," said Saint Paul. Modern science has proven he was right, and that it is the invisible body which is the real body.

"If this earth and all that it is composed of—land or ocean or air; man or beast; pyramid or pavement—could be resolved into the physical atoms composing everything in it or on it created by God or man, each atom of this dust would be identical physically. There would not be one kind of atom for iron and another for oxygen.

"The differentiation between what are called elementary substances is first made apparent in the molecule or first combination of the atoms. It is not in the atom itself, unless it be in the size, as may not be improbable. The atoms combine in different numbers to make differently shaped molecules, and it is from this difference in the shape of the molecule that we get the difference between gold and silver, copper and tin, or oxygen and hydrogen.

"In all chemical compounds, such as water and alcohol, the molecules at the base of the two or more substances break up into their original atoms and form a new molecule composed of all the atoms in the two or more things combined. To make this chemical combination we must change the rate of vibration of one or the other or both until they strike a common chord. As we saw last term, oxygen and hydrogen have different specific heats, and no two other elements have the same specific heat, while heat raises the rate of vibration. Any given amount of heat raises the vibration of one more than another. Apply heat, and the rate of one will rise faster than that of the other until they reach a common chord. Then they fall apart and recombine.

"If we pass a current of electricity through this sealed jar containing oxygen and hydrogen in mechanical union, the spark that leaps across the points furnishes the heat, and a drop of water appears and falls to the bottom. A large portion of the gases has disappeared. It has been converted into water. What is left of the gases will expand and fill the bottle.

"The drop of water but for local causes, but for a certain attraction of the earth, would float in the centre of the jar at the centre of gravity, as the earth does in space. But the centre of gravity of the two bodies is far within the earth, and the drop gets as close to it as it can. The earth's 'pull' takes it to the bottom. If the jar were far enough away in space the drop would float, as the earth floats, at a point where all pulls balance, and the drop of water would have enough pull of its own, enough gravity within itself to hold all the gas left in the jar to itself as an atmosphere. It would be a centre of energy, a minature world.

"The drop of water is not a homogenous mass. About one third of the bulk of the drop of water is made up of independent oxygen and hydrogen atoms interspersed through it, as any liquid is through this piece of blotting paper. And it has, and keeps, by its own attraction, an atmosphere of the gas. Each molecule of water has a thin layer, or skin, of the gas; even as it comes from this faucet.

"Let us return again to the physical dust, the atom. Why should it form by fives for iron, by nines for hydrogen? Where did the atom come from? What is it? We know that like the drop of water, it is a miniature world with an atmosphere of ether; and the natural inference is that it is made from ether as the drop of water was made from gas. Many things confirm this inference, and it may be accepted as 'a working hypothesis' that it is made from ether as the drop of water is made from gas, by the chemical union of a large amount of ether of different kinds, the etheric molecules of which consist of 2 and 3 or 5 and 4 etheric atoms, and that the tendency to combine in this or that number in physical matter is an inherited tendency brought with it from the etheric world of matter on which, or in which, each element of this world is two or more. There is no kind of matter in this physical world, that has not its prototype in the etheric, and the laws of its action and reaction here are laws which it inherits and brings with it. They are not laws made here. They are laws of the other world—even as the matter itself is matter of the other world.

"In 1882, Professor Lodge, in a lecture before the Royal
Institution on 'The Luminiferous Ether' defined it as:

"'One continuous substance, filling all space, which can vibrate as light, which can be sheared into positive and negative electricity, which in whirls constitutes matter, and which transmits by continuity and not impact every action and reaction of which matter is capable.'

"This reads today like baby-talk but at that time (eighteen years ago), it was considered by many timid conservative scientists as 'a daring movement.' It is noteworthy in that it was the first public scientific announcement that the physical matter is a manifestation or form of the ether. And it was made before general acceptance of the division of the ether into soniferous, luminiferous and tangiferous.

"'Which in whirls constitutes matter.' Professor Lodge believed that 'some etheric molecules revolved so rapidly on their axis that they could not be penetrated.' Watch the soap-bubbles that I am blowing. Each and every one is revolving as the earth revolves, from west to east. What I wish to call your attention to is the fact that can be proven, both mathematically and theoretically, that at a certain rate of speed in the revolution they could not be penetrated by any rifle-ball. At a higher rate of speed they would be harder than globes of solid chilled steel, harder even than carbon. Professor Lodge believed that the etheric molecule revolved so rapidly that, thin as it was in its shell, it gave us the dust out of which worlds were made. There is one fatal error in this idea, although it is held even now by many. It is based entirely on gravity, and gravity is alone considered in its problems. There are two great forces in the universe, not one, as many scientific people fail to remember —Gravity and Apergy, or the centrifugal and centripetal forces. The pull in is and must be always balanced by the pull out. There is in the universe as much repulsion as attraction, and the former is a force quite as important as the latter. The bubble's speed kept increasing until apergy, the tendency to fly off, overcame gravity, and it ruptured.

"Professor Lodge failed to take into account this apergic force, this tendency to fly off, when he gave such high revolutionary speed to the etheric molecules, a speed in which apergy would necessarily exceed gravity. The failure to take apergy into consideration has been the undoing of many physicists.

"Today we know that the ether is matter, the same as our own, only finer and rarer and in much more rapid vibration. We know that this ether has its solids, liquids and gases formed from molecules of its atoms, even as our own are formed. We know that its atoms combine as ours do, and while we have but eighty elementary combinations, it must have more than double the number. We know that every form and shape and combination of these elements from this plane flows from inherited tendencies having their root in the etheric world.

"The two worlds are one world—as much at one with ours as the world of gas about us is at one with our liquids and solids. It is 'continuity, not impact.' They not only touch everywhere and in everything, but they are one and the same in action and reaction."

Thus spake a certain wise teacher of physics. To his wise utterances, we can only add that such as we are today "we see through a glass, darkly." Yet there will come a day when the physical bandages will be removed from our eyes, and we shall see face to face the beauty and grandeur and glory of this invisible world, and that in truth it 'transmits by continuity and not impact every action and reaction of which matter is capable,' forming one continuous chain of cause and effect, without a link missing. There are no gulfs to cross; no bridges to be made. It is here; not there. It is at one with us. And we are at one with it. One and the same law controls and guides the etheric atom and the physical atom made from its molecules, whether the latter are made in "whirls," as at first supposed, or by orderly combination as now believed.

In fact, this visible world of ours is the perfect product of the other invisible one, having in it its root and foundation, the very sap of its life.