Scientists some time ago postulated and have since by sheer necessity regarded the ether of space as proven to exist. Yet so difficult is it for us to modify the method or form of our apprehension of the world around us that the majority still prefer to work on through the paradox of a material universe, which includes an ether lacking in the fundamental characteristics ascribed to matter. All known matter has weight and obeys gravitation; the ether, by the very theory on which it rests, does neither. The transmission of material phenomena requires a material vehicle, as is not only demonstrated by every day experience, but is necessarily involved in a system holding that all phenomena are but incidents of matter, the one only reality. Nevertheless any material vehicle, however rarified, gives rise to some friction when bodies pass through it, retarding them; the ether does nothing of this. The relative distances between the molecules in the rarest gas are enormous; the ether of science is said to fill all space homogeneously. Science indeed seems to have restored the worship of "Pater Aither," a god outside the material universe, yet within every part of it and supporting it. But they have new names for it all, and in view of the peculiar opaqueness, materiality, which the expressions and forms wherein we do our so-called thinking seem to possess before the Perceiver, they may be forgiven for not recognizing their teaching in Hesiod and Lucian and the Vedas. The most illuminating suggestion in this whole matter we owe, among physicists, to Lord Kelvin, in his vortex-ring theory of matter. Taking the rings of smoke puffed by a locomotive or a pipe, and making allowances for the friction of the medium in which they revolve, Lord Kelvin found a complete identity in behavior, at every point of comparison he was able to institute, between these rings and the individual atoms into which all matter is held to be divisible. One most significant fact so demonstrated is that such a vortex-ring, once brought into existence, and being free from frictional or any other outside interference to break up its circuit of motion, is eternal and indestructible, an entity in itself. The theory then is that an atom of matter is a vortex-ring in or of ether, set up by some underlying force, and that all the attributes displayed by material atoms are incidents of this vortex mode of motion. Its hardness is the same as the impenetrability of a whirlpool through which a swimmer cannot pass. Its stability is of the same sort as that of the tops, held contrary to gravity by a cord on one end of the axis, so long as they revolve rapidly—a principle utilized to give absolute rigidity to the steering gear of torpedoes. And it is the simplest explanation of atomic affinities to suggest that it is the rate, or coefficient, of vibration (vibration being another name for circuit of activity) which determines the attractive or repellant force we see manifested.