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or may not be so, but we are sure that Mr. Dahlke would be the last person to adhere to this definition, if on going to a restaurant he orders, say, a cup of tea, and the waiter begins to move about cakes, biscuits, coffee, etc., etc., thinking to himself that the guest's cup of tea is only a negation of all these and of everything else, except tea, which he is, however, precluded from knowing, since it has no positive contents of knowledge in itself. This, we fear, is too good to be true.
Jiva, as has already been pointed out, is a living rhythm, subsisting by its own force, so that it is actually indestructible, like the ultimate particles of matter. Scientific research reduces the atoms of matter to vortex rings in ether* which persist by their own rhythm.
THE SIDDHANTA.
* The following from The Ether of Space,' by Sir Oliver Lodge, may be read with interest on this point:
"But now comes the question, how is it possible for matter to be composed of ether? A solid possesses the properties of rigidity, impenetrability, elasticity, and such like: how can these be imitated by a perfect fluid such as ether must be?
"The answer is, they can be imitated by a fluid in motion; a statement which we make in confidence as the result of a great part of Lord Kelvin's work. It may be illustrated by a few experiments. A wheel of spokes, transparent, or permeable when stationary, becomes opaque when revolving, so that a ball thrown against it does not go through, but rebounds. A silk cord hanging from a pulley becomes rigid and viscous when put into rapid motion; and pulses or waves which may be generated on the cord travel along it with a speed equal to its own velocity, whatever that velocity may be, so that they appear to stand still. A flexible chain, set spinning, can stand up on end while the motion continues. A jet of water at sufficient speed can be struck with a hammer, and resists being cut with a sword. A spinning disk of paper becomes elastic like flexible metal, and can act like a circular saw A vortex ring, ejected from an elliptical orifice, oscillates about the stable circular 57
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