something altogether opposed to all
the Rules of Philosophy and therefore of experience.

I have already shown that a frictionless medium is opposed to all
philosophy and experience, and is an anomaly in the universe.

On the strictly philosophical assumption that Aether is matter, and
therefore atomic and gravitative, the whole question of the inertia of
the Aether is reduced to one of common experience. It is, at least to my
mind, difficult to conceive of mass without weight or without atomicity,
and yet that is the unphilosophical position of the present state of
science in relation to the Aether. In other words, while the Aether is
supposed to possess inertia, which is dependent upon mass, as measured
by gravity, yet it is supposed not to be gravitative, that is, that the
mass of the Aether has no weight at all, and therefore is not mass,
which assumption contradicts itself. From Arts. 44 and 45, however, we
have seen, to be strictly philosophical, that Aether must be atomic and
also gravitative. It can now be easily understood how it can possess
inertia like any other matter, and is therefore capable of receiving
motion from other matter, and also of imparting that motion to other
matter.

So that, wherever there is motion of any kind in the Aether, either in
the form of vibratory motion as heat, or undulatory motion as light, or
rotatory motion as electricity, those motions will affect adjoining
matter in the same way that the motion of any other moving matter
affects any body with which it comes into contact.

From the fact that Aether possesses inertia, and is also gravitative, we
have now to alter our conception of this universal space-filling medium,
and in place of a frictionless medium, which is incapable of imparting
motion to any body, we have now to remember henceforth that the Aether
is matter, which possesses inertia, and therefore has the capacity not
only of offering resistance to any body moving through it, as a comet or
meteor, but also of imparting the motion which it may receive in any
manner to any other matter, as a planet, satellite, or sun, that may be
floating in it.

With this philosophical view of the Aether, which is entirely in harmony
with our first and second Rules of Philosophy, we shall be able to give
a physical explanation of the Law of Gravitation, as we have now a
physical medium existing in all atomic, solar, and stellar space, which
can both accept motion, and transmit that