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The earliest recognition of the motive principle called dharma dravra is found in the Jaina literature alone but ancient Greek philosophers also reconginsed its necessity in the scheme of the universe. Anaxagoras in his work On Nature (450 B.C.) introduced for the first time in the Western world the idea of a medium necessary for motion and called it 'the cause of all changes' : Aristotle, called it aether. !70 In the standard work of Dr. J.W. Mellor, quoted before, we read as follows:
"Aristotle added a fifth element, aether, more divine than the others (earth, water, air and fire) and which pervaded all things and was in perpetual motion. The ancient Hindu philosophers also had a fifth element, which, in their system, was wrongly supposed to be a medium for propagating sound, etc., and which, in consequence, had something in common with the modern concept of an aether pervading all space.”
The non-atomic continuous nature of aether has been recognised by science in the following words :
“Ether is not composed of atoms. If it be supposed that it consists of minute homogeneous atoms, 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...1 postulate for aether a special structure which is not atomistic, like that of ponderable matter,"l?2
“Huyghens introduced the conception of the aether--a weightless, transparent medium which permeates the entire universe."
“At the time when that conception (that of electric fluid) arose, it had become the fashion to introduce into science, in addition to matter of different kinds which possessed weight, substances which one might call imponderable, i.e., weightless fluids. Heat, electricity, magnetism and the aether were some of
170. See 'Greek Thinkers' by T. Gompertz, London, and also 'Early Greek Philosophy by J. Burnet, London.
171. Inorganic & Theoretical Chemistry by J.W. Mellor, Vol. I, p. 33. 172. The Riddle of the Universe by Prof. Haeckal, Chap. XII. 173. The World in Modern Science by Infeld, p. 30.
