It is not only amid the depths of space that these wonderfully swift motions take place in the ethereal universe. As I have said, that universe pervades ours throughout its entire extent. The densest of our solids is as freely traversed by the ether as a forest by the summer breeze. As the foliage of a thick forest may prevent the passage of fierce winds, so may a solid body prevent the passage of light-waves--though all solid bodies, as we know, do not prevent, and some scarcely even modify, the passage of light. But substances which prevent the passage of light are yet found capable of transmitting ethereal motions of similar velocity. According to Wheatstone's experiments electricity travels at the rate of more than 200,000 miles per second along stout copper wire. Fizeau's experiments gave a lower speed; but they did not negative Wheatstone's, the conditions not being the same. Can anything be more wonderful than the thought of the transmission of electricity with this enormous velocity? What really happens we do not know. Perhaps if we were told what really takes place between and among the particles of the wire, we should find ourselves utterly unable to conceive it--for, as we have seen, the properties of the ether, and, therefore, the processes taking place in the ethereal universe, are probably unlike any within our experience. But this we know--a certain condition of the molecules of the wire is transmitted, by virtue of the ethereal medium pervading the wire, at a rate so enormous that, if the wire itself could move at that rate, the force required to bring its mass to rest would suffice to generate enough heat to turn many times as much metal into the vaporous state.
Nay, even as regards the energy of their action on the matter of our universe, these movements in the ethereal universe enormously exceed the forces we are accustomed to regard as most powerful. The effects produced by gravity, for instance, are almost evanescent compared with those produced by heat. The sun's rays poured on a piece of metal for a few minutes produce motions in every one of the ultimate particles of the metal. Each particle vibrates with inconceivable rapidity (referring to the rate at which the vibrations succeed each other), and with great actual velocity of motion. Summing up the energy thus pervading the piece of metal, we find that it incalculably exceeds the energy represented by the velocity which the sun's attraction would communicate in the same interval to that piece of metal, supposed to be entirely under its influence at the earth's distance from the sun.