Such an object is highly praiseworthy, and is too often
left out of sight by those who write elementary works. But the good
service thus rendered is far more than counterbalanced by the host of
erroneous conceptions which at once arise at the introduction of this
luckless term. This notion of an "imaginary ether" should be at once and
forever discarded by every writer on physics. The very word should be
remorselessly expunged from every discussion of the subject. It is one
of the most baneful words in the whole dictionary of scientific
terminology. It stands for a fiction as useless as it is without
foundation. It is useless because superfluous, and not needed in order
to account for the phenomena. An ether is no more necessary in the case
of light than it is in the case of sound. Thermal vibrations are the
oscillations of atoms, not the undulations of an ether. If it be urged
that rays of light and heat will traverse a vacuum, we reply, that the
much-derided aphorism, "Nature abhors a vacuum," is as true at this day
as it was before Torricelli's experiment. A perfect vacuum has never
been produced; and if it were to be produced, the ether must be
excluded, else it would be no vacuum, after all.
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