28/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE

But in what sense does this atomic form indicate the ultimate limit of divisibility in matter? Probably only by representing the limit of our ability to register phenomena of disintegration, and to subdivide material forms. The latest scientific investigations point to the conclusion that physical phenomena are due to various modes of a universal energy, and that matter itself, as an objective phenomenon, represents certain definite modes of ethereal activity.

At first, matter and energy appear to be essentially different in nature and origin; but scientific experiments indicate that, after all, matter is only a manifestation of energy. The atomic hypothesis of Lord Kelvin, according to which atoms are merely vortex rings in the ether, tends to corroborate the theory that the phenomenon Matter, like light, heat, electricity, and magnetism, is an effect produced by ethereal activity.

And still further investigations pursued by Prof. Elmer Gates, indicate that even the ether itself is composed of inconceivably minute particles. If this be the case, we must suppose that some still more subtle medium fills the interspaces between the particles of which it is composed. Where, then, is the process of subdivision to end? Is it not reasonable to infer that it is capable of indefinite continuance?

We are obliged to conceive space to be limitless, co-extensive with our thought of infinity; we know that worlds are organized into systems, and those into systems of systems on a still more stupendous scale, until it seems well-nigh absurd to attempt to postulate an ultimate boundary for the world of matter, beyond which would lie a blank, meaningless void.

Here the transcendental doctrine of Kant relieves us of our dilemma, by showing that space has only a subjective value; that it is a mental condition governing the perception of things outwardly, and not an object of perception. Now if matter “has a basis on the ether,” and if the ether is limitless, coextensive with space, and if space is subjective in its character,

the conclusion is well-nigh inevitable that there can be no absolutely definite limit, either to the number or the extent of material bodies; that the same difficulties attend their computation, which are encountered in dealing with abstract units; that the unit of matter is purely ideal, like the unit which furnishes the basis of enumeration in mathematics.