Now, a current of electricity is known to be a stream of electrons (negative charges) flowing along or in a conductor; and an electron is an atom of—_energy_. But where was this energy stored? “In the all-pervasive ether,” say many physicists. “There is no ether,” say others. The electromagnetic field represents energy storage _in space_—not in a universal, incomprehensible, paradoxical something called “ether.” A field of _energy_ is intelligible. It takes the place of the conception of action at a distance and of the ether. No “ether” need be postulated as the carrier of the field energy in space. It is its own carrier. “Energy is the only real existing entity, the primary conception, which exists for us because our senses respond to it” (Steinmetz). “Lines of force,” says Dr. N. R. Campbell, the famous English physicist, “are just lines of force, independent for their existence of all surrounding bodies, and there is no more to be said about them.... Our Electrical theory, so far from providing additional support for the conception of the ether filling all space, does not require such a conception at all.” Dr. Le Bon finds the exhaustless source of electricity in the interior of atoms. The atoms in one pound of earth contain enough energy to run all the factories, mills, railroads, etc., and light all the cities and villages of the United States, for a month, Steinmetz tells us. “It would,” he states further (“Relativity and Space,” Page 45), “supply the fuel for the biggest transatlantic liner for 300 trips from America to Europe and back. And if this energy of one pound of dirt could be let loose instantaneously, it would be equal in destructive powers to over a million tons of dynamite.” From the above statement, we may well understand Dr. Le Bon’s interpretation of the work of a dynamo: “Matter being easily dissociated and constituting an immense reservoir of intra-atomic energy, it is enough to admit that the lines of force seized upon by the conducting body (the coils), which cuts them and causes them to flow in the form of an electric current, are constantly replaced at the expense of the intra-atomic energy. This latter being relatively almost inexhaustible, a single magnet can furnish an almost infinite number of lines of force.” It can be shown that the kinetic energy of one kilogram (2.2 pounds) weight of matter is about 9000 millions of millions of kilogram-meters, or 25 thousand million kilowatt-hours (a kilowatt-hour = 1000 watt hours). This means, in other words, that the quantity of energy in the atoms of 2.2 pounds of ordinary matter is thousands of million times greater than the energy of an equal quantity of coal, _released by chemical combustion_.