CHAPTER III
THE QUINTESSENCE (I)
Space, whether inter-planetary, inter-material, or inter-organic, is filled with a subtle fluid or gas, which we call, as did the ancients, Aith-in-Solintaire Aether. This fluid or gas, unchangeable in composition, indestructible, invisible, pervades everything and all matter. Metal, mineral, tree, plant, animal, man; each is charged with the Ether in varying degrees. All life on the planet is charged in like manner; a world is built up in this fluid, and moves through a sea of it.
Ether, which the occultist terms astral light, determines the constitution of bodies. Hardness and softness, solidity and liquidity, all depend on the relative proportion of ethereal and ponderable matter of which they are composed.
The arbitrary division and classification of physical science, the whole range of physical phenomena, proceeds from the Primary Aether, for Science has reduced matter as we know it to Ether, which, although not solid matter, is still matter. When most of us speak of matter, of course, we usually visualize solid substance, but it has been proved by Science that matter is not actually solid, but merely a stress, a strain in the Ether. The atoms, and finer still, the electrons and protons of which it is composed, all move