CORRESPONDENCE

Colonist, Volume XXXV, Issue 7227, 25 January 1892, Page 4

CORRESPONDENCE

, To the Editor of the Colonist. [ Sir,™ " Sour well known correspondent i " Horn&y," who is usually botb sensible and I witty, in his iset letter writes a sentence that would do credit to the crankiest philosopher . that ever lived. lie says : — " We waste j what we do kcow in a search for the un--3 knowable, and all we do know for a certainty . after fifty centuries of investigations is — that we know nothing." It is not possible to 3 waste what we have not got, and as " Homey " I is certain that he has no knowledge, he L . cannot waste it in the search for the unknowi able or for anything else. Again he virtually j arrogates to himself omniscience, when he ! declares there is an unknowable, for unless f he knows all that is knowable, it is not 3 possible for him to know whether there is 3 an unknowable or not ; but he also states 3 that he knows nothing, therefore he both \ claims to know all that is knowable, and to f know nothing at the same time ; which is 3 absurd. B As "Homey" does not know anything, s why does he talk about " noa-supernaturßl ?'' Theoßophy denies that there is any super--3 natural, and we Bhall certainly not be in a I position to say that there is until we are acquainted with all the laws of nature. 3 " Homey 's JI cheap sneers at cranks and I mystics does not alter the fact that the leader J of every step forward was a crank, and very 3 often a mystic. I doubt if it is possible to mention the originator of any great reform in morals, arts, or sciences who was not at first I considered a crank. Many a man whose I; name is now held in the highest esteem, was in his own day thought to be a lunatic. Though no doubt ether is a hypothetical : substance, are we not justified in accepting [ its existence as a reality until the weight of evidence is shown to be against such a con--5 elusion? Sir W. R. Grove in the passage 3 quoted by " Student," states that it is impossible to disprove its existence. Dr Hartwig J says concerning it : — " This medium, which I is called the luminiferous ether, is indeed of j so subtle a nature that it entirely escapes our senses; no balance can ever weigh it, no crucible can ever submit it to the teat of chemistry, and yet the physical investigator is as convinced of its existence as if it be--3 longed to the world of sense, for its presence ? fully explains all the phenomena of light i which are utterly inexplicable without it. ? The luminiferous ether fills all space, and ) penetrates between the molecules of all bodies, t out on account of its extreme tenuity it is 9 influenced by gravitation." — « The Aerial World,' pp 49, 50. Professor Tyndall says : — " All these atoms or molecules are, moreover, surrounded and embraced by a common medium, the luminiferous ether, which exists " within our atmosphere as a second and finer atmosphere, and must be conceived as infinitely subtle and elastic. It fills stellar space, it makes the universe a whole, and is the '. medium through which solar light and heat are conveyed to the surface of the earth." — ' Fragments of Science,' p. 148. At the last meeting of the British Association held at Cardiff in August, 1891, the President, Dr W. Huggins, the greatest living authority on the uee of the spectroscope as applied to asJ tronomy, used the following words in his 5 inaugural address :— " What the Bpectroscope 3 immediately reveals to us are the waves which l are set up in the ether filling all interstellar t space, years or hundreds of years ago, by the i motions oi the molecules of the celestial sub- - gtonces." . 3 If men who have spent all their lives in the l investigation of physical phenomena are t satisfied that the balance of evidence is in , favor of the existence of ether, surely, we,.

who have but the slightest smattering of knowledge of the physical sciences, andr are therefore unable to weigh the evidence for ourselves, may accept their conclusion as sound.— Tours, &c, J.B.W.