it may be shown that we can explain everything in an unlimited number of ways, by connections after the manner of Hertz, or, again, by central forces. No doubt it may be just as easily demonstrated that everything may be explained by simple impacts. For this, let us bear in mind that it is not enough to be content with the ordinary matter of which we are aware by means of our senses, and the movements of which we observe directly. We may conceive of ordinary matter as either composed of atoms, whose internal movements escape us, our senses being able to estimate only the displacement of the whole; or we may imagine one of those subtle fluids, which under the name of ether or other names, have from all time played so important a rôle in physical theories. Often we go further, and regard the ether as the only primitive, or even as the only true matter. The more moderate consider ordinary matter to be condensed ether, and there is nothing startling in this conception; but others only reduce its importance still further, and see in matter nothing more than the geometrical locus of singularities in the ether. Lord Kelvin, for instance, holds what we call matter to be only the locus of those points at which the ether is animated by vortex motions. Riemann believes it to be locus of those points at which ether is constantly destroyed; to Wiechert or Larmor, it is the locus of the points at which the ether has undergone a kind of torsion of a
