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THE SIDDHANTA.
the world, and you stop its evolution instantaneously, since no world-process is conceivable where continuity and succession are both conspicuous by their absence. Thus, from one point of view, Time serves as the mainspring of the perpetuum mobile, and, from another, keeps back the impish chance from playing its uncanny pranks with men and things in the world.
We now come to the two substances known as Dharma and Adharma. These are the two kinds of Ether which are necessary as a help to jivas and matter in their motion and rest respectively. Without Dharma, as an accompanying cause, motion from place to place will be an impossibility in nature, and without Adharma it will not be possible for things in motion to come to rest. It is obvious that things in nature require some kind of a medium for their motion, for, as Haeckel points out (The Riddle of the Universe, Chap. xii), the idea of action at a distance is quite untenable in philosophy, and is possible only on the supposition that things cross over empty spaces by taking a leap, which is a highly absurd proposition. As regards its structure,
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"Ether is not composed of atoms. If it be supposed that it consists of minute homogeneous atoms (for instance, indivisible etheric particles of a uniform size), it must be further supposed that there is something else between these atoms, either 'empty space' or a third, completely unknown medium, a purely hypothetical inter ether;" the question as to the nature of this brings us back to the original difficulty, and so on ad infinitum. As the idea of an empty space and an action at a distance is scarcely possible in the present condition of our knowledge I postulate for Ether a special structure which is not atomistic, like that of ponderable matter, and which may provisionally be called (without further determination) etheric or dynamic structure." (The Riddle of the Universe).
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