molecules of all the elements, that is, of molecules of every form of Matter, must be dynamic in the highest degree, must be an omnipotent solvent: if water, consisting of only two elements, can hold in solution, besides its own constituents, ten or a dozen other elements, the Ether, consisting of all the elements, _a fortiori_ can hold in solution all these elements. Nor is the actual omnipresence of the Ether altogether beyond our grasp. To say that every electron, every atom, every molecule, every element or form of Matter, every planet, sun, and system, floats in the Ether and is interpenetrated by it, is to say that which seems improbable; but the analogy of water again helps to a natural concrete image. To say that three-quarters by weight of human flesh, three-eighths by weight of human bones, consist of water, is to say that which seems improbable, but which is nevertheless true. Thus we can guess the Ether in terms of our Universe of three dimensions. The esoteric nature of the Ether is more easily understood. I use the word "esoteric" with my own meaning, implying nothing mystical. By esoteric I mean here a thing known only to me. Upon the publication of this book, the thing I am about to tell becomes exoteric. I _make_ no mystery. The Universe is all mystery: the existence of a drop of water is as mysterious as the existence of music. Man is the Universe alive and conscious, and with the capacity of entire self-consciousness. This capacity, undeveloped and misunderstood, is the source of all man's misery, the hotbed of the idea of Sin and the idea of God. Unable to comprehend it, the Greek and the Norseman projected their trouble into Olympus and Hades, Asgard and Nifelheim, gods and goddesses, titans, giants, furies, valkyrs. Every people cast out and projected its self-consciousness as Other World in some form. A unique race, the Jews, threw its shadow on the Universe as Jehovah, the One God, jealous, vengeful, inhuman. The European Aryans laid hold of this, but in a decadent, Christianized form; and as they lacked in general the intense individuality of the Hebrew, they soon brought it into a deliquescence of the Trinity, the Mother of Heaven, Saints, transubstantiation, the God of love, etc. The hardier northern races, however, reverted to a more Hebraic form, preferring the God of battles to the Madonna; and withal the idea of the One God remained dominant in Christian countries, being recruited by the sudden rise and rivalry of Islam, with its strident profession of monotheism. The material source of this uneasy self-consciousness which projects itself into Other World is twofold. One of these is the Nature of Man, formerly called Original Sin, God and Sin being in this regard convertible terms. I have stated this source clearly enough in the "Prime Minister," in that passage where the protagonist overcomes the desire to pray, conjuring himself to--