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Polarity In Matter. THE ultimate elements of the material Universe are T ether, energy and matter.
First, ether : a universal, all-prevading medium, unponderable or infinitely light, and almost infinitely elastic, in which all matter from suns and planets down to molecules and atoms, floats as in a boundless ocean, and whose tremors or vibrations, propagated as waves, transport the different forms of energy, light, heat and electricity, across space.
Secondly, energy: a primitive, indestructible something, which causes motion and manifests under its many diversified forms, such as gravity, mechanical work, molecular and atomic forces, light, heat, electricity and magnitism, all of which are merely protean transformations of the one fundamental energy, and convertible into each other.
Thirdly, matter : the ultimate elements of this are atoms, which combining form molecules, of little pieces of ordinary matter, with all its qualities, which are the bricks used in building all the varied structures of the organic and inorganic world. Of these atoms some 70 have never been divided, and therefore, although we may suspect that they are merely combinations or transformations of one original" matter, we must be content for the present to consider them as elementary. In like manner we may suspect that
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