Lame, though a prudent mathematician, wrote: "_The
existence_ of the ethereal fluid is _incontestably demonstrated_ by
the propagation of light through the planetary spaces, and by the
explanation, so simple and so complete, of the phenomena of
diffraction in the wave theory of light"; and he adds: "The laws of
double refraction prove with no less certainty that the _ether exists_
in all diaphanous media." Thus the ether was no longer an hypothesis,
but in some sort a tangible reality. But the ethereal fluid of which
the existence was thus proclaimed has some singular properties.
Were it only a question of explaining rectilinear propagation,
reflexion, refraction, diffraction, and interferences notwithstanding
grave difficulties at the outset and the objections formulated by
Laplace and Poisson (some of which, though treated somewhat lightly at
the present day, have not lost all value), we should be under no
obligation to make any hypothesis other than that of the undulations
of an elastic medium, without deciding in advance anything as to the
nature and direction of the vibrations.
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