that an external action should intervene in order to modify the energy of this wake and consequently to increase or diminish the velocity. This implies, in the absence of all other kinetic energy than this of electromagnetic origin, corresponding to the production of the wake, by the law of Galileo on the conservation of the velocity acquired, in the absence of action of all external fields of force, that an electrified centre possesses inertia by the fact alone that it is electrified.
It is the immovable ether, the electromagnetic medium, which serves as a fixed support for the axes with respect to which the principle of inertia is applicable, and of which the ordinary mechanics limits itself in affirming the existence by saying: there exists a system of axes, determined by a nearly uniform translation with respect to which the principle of Galileo is exactly verified.
(12) The Absolute Motion. If we are able, from the actual point of view, to conceive of the ether as supporting these Galilean axes, it does not necessarily follow that the electromagnetic phenomena enable us to arrive at this absolute motion. It seems, on the contrary, so far, that static experiments, carried on in a material system by an observer carried along with it with a uniform motion of translation, do not allow, whatever may be the degree of accuracy of observation, the detection of a relative motion of the ether with respect to matter.
Larmor, and more completely Lorentz, have shown that there exist in the system actions of electromagnetic origin; it is possible to establish in a complete manner a static correspondence (relating to the positions of equilibrium or to the black fringes in optics) between the system in motion and a system fixed with respect to the ether, by means of a change of variables which preserves for the equations of the medium for a moving system the exact form which they possess for a system at rest.
The two systems differ from one another in that the moving system is slightly contracted compared with the fixed system in the direction of the resultant motion by an amount always very small, proportional to the square of the ratio of the velocity of motion to the velocity of light. This contraction affects equally all the elements of the moving system, i. e. the electrons themselves, if we admit with Lorentz that the interior actions of these electrons are solely electromagnetic actions or are modified in the same manner by the translation, - with the result that observation cannot prove this contraction any more than it can prove the general dragging of the ether. These elements behave as though they belonged to a corresponding fixed system. Thus is found an explanation of the negative results of experiments undertaken to show the absolute motion of the earth, by Michelson and Morley, Lord Rayleigh, Brace, Trouton, and Noble, if one admits
