ture of the ether and of
molecules, we know that to some extent at least they obey the same
dynamic laws, and that they act on one another in accordance with these
laws. Until therefore it is absolutely disproved, it must remain the
simplest and most probable assumption that they are finally made of the
same stuff, that the material molecule is in some kind of knot or
coagulation of ether."[82]

The molecule of matter such as we know, then, may have been, and very
probably was, produced by evolution from the atoms or vortex rings of
ether, according to the theory advanced by the authors of the work
called the "Unseen Universe," which I have referred to. The world of
ether is to be regarded in some sort the obverse complement of the world
of sensible matter, so that whatever energy is dissipated in the one is
by the same act accumulated in the other; or, as Fiske describes it, "it
is like the negative plate in photography, where light answers to shadow
and shadow to light." Every act of consciousness is accompanied by
molecular displacements in the brain, and these of course are responded
to by movements in the ethereal world. Views of this kind were long ago
entertained by Babbage, and they have since recommended themselves to
other men of science, and amongst others to Jevon, who says: "Mr.
Babbage has pointed out that if we had power to follow and detect the
manifest effects of any disturbance, each particle of existing matter
must be a register of all that has happened. * * * The air itself is one
vast library on whose pages are forever written all that man has ever
said or whispered. There in their mutable but unerring characters,
mixed with, the earliest as well as the latest sighs of mortality, stand
forever recorded vows unredeemed, promises unfulfilled, perpetuating in
the united movements of each particle the testimony of man's changeful
will."[83]

So thought affects the substance of the present visible universe; it
produces a material organ of memory. "But the motions which accompany
thought," say the authors,[84] "will also affect the invisible order of
things," and thus it follows that "thought conceived to affect the
matter of another universe, simultaneously with this, may explain a
future state."[85]

Death, then, is for the individual but a transfer from one physical
state of existence to another, according to the "authors'"[86] idea; and
so, on the largest scale, the death or final loss of energy by