For suppose the æther, instead of being perfectly smooth, to be corrugated, and to have all manner of definite marks and furrows. Then the earth, coming in its course round the sun on this corrugated surface, would behave exactly like the phonograph behaves.
In the case of the phonograph the indented metal sheet is moved past the metal point attached to the membrane. In the case of the earth it is the indented æther which remains still while the material earth slips along it. Corresponding to each of the marks in the æther there would be a movement of matter, and the consistency and laws of the movements of matter would depend on the predetermined disposition of the furrows and indentations of the solid surface along which it slips.
The sun, too, moving along the æther, would receive its extreme energy of vibration from the particular region along which it moved, and the furrows of the intervening distance give the phenomena actually observed of our relationship to the sun and other heavenly bodies.
Thus matter may be entirely passive, and the history of nations, stories of kings, down to the smallest details in the life of individuals, be phonographed out according to predetermined marks in the æther. In that case a man would, as to his material body, correspond to certain portions of matter; as to his actions and thoughts he would be a complicated set of furrows in the æther.
Now what the man is in himself may be left undetermined; but he would be more intimately connected with the æther than with the matter of his body. And we may suppose that the æther itself is capable of movement and alteration; that it moulds itself into new furrows and marks.
Thus the old woman smoking a pipe by the wayside years ago, and whom I somehow so often remember, is not much different from me—we are both corrugations of the same æther.
Now our consciousness is limited to our bodily surroundings. Yet it may be supposed that in an action of our wills we, whatever we are (and for the present let us suppose that we are a part of the æther), we may be altering these corrugations of the æther. A single act of our wills, when we really do act, may be a universal affair with quite infinite relations. Thus it may be the immediate presentation to us of an alteration proceeding from us of all that set of corrugations which represents our future life; it may be the whole disposition and lie of events, which are prepared for the earth to phonograph out, being differently disposed. And it evidently is quite independent of the particular furrows in which such alteration first occurs. That long strip of æther which is a very humble individual may, by an act of self-configuration, affect the neighbouring long strips and produce great changes. At any rate the intrinsic value of the will is quite independent of the kind of furrows along which any material human body is proceeding.