THE ETHER OF SPACE that closely, Not yet do we fully realise what we ate doing. Not yet have we any dynamical theory of electric currents, of static charges, and of magnetism. Not yet, indeed, have we any dynamical theory of light. In fact, the ether has not yet been brought under the domain of simple mechanics—it has not yet been reduced to motion and force: and that probably because the force aspect of it has been so singularly elusive that it is a question whether we ought to think of it as material at all. No, it is apart from mechanics at present. Conceivably it may remain apart; and our first additional cate- gory, wherewith the foundations of physics must some day be enlarged, may turn out to be an etherea] one. And some such inclusion may have to be made before we can attempt to annex vital or mental processes. Perhaps they will all come in together. Howsoever these things be, this is the kind of meaning lurking in the phrase that we do not yet know what electricity or what the ether is. We have as yet no dynamical explanation of either of them; but the past century has taught us what seems to their student an overwhelming quantity of facts about them, And when the present century, or the century after, lets us deeper into their secrets, and into the secrets of some other phenomena now in course of being rationally investigated, I feel as if it would be 28