subsequently put to profitable use by Gustav Wendt from an evolutionary
point of view. He endeavoured to show that the various elements are
products of evolution or of historically originating combinations of
seven primary elements, and that these last again are historical products
of one single primitive element This hypothetical original matter had
been already designated by Crookes, in his _Genesis of the Elements_, as
primary material or protyl.[10] The empirical proof of the existence of
this original matter lying at the foundation of all ponderable material
is perhaps only a question of time. Its discovery would probably realise
the alchemists' hope of being able to produce gold and silver
artificially out of other elements. But then arises the other great
question: "How is this primary mass related to the cosmic ether? Do these
two original substances stand in fundamental and eternal antithesis to
one another? Or was it the mobile ether itself, perhaps, that originally
engendered the heavy mass?"[11]

In answer to this great and fundamental question, various physical
hypotheses have been put forward. But, like the various atomic theories
of chemistry, they have not as yet been clearly established, and the same
appears to me to be the case also with the ingenious hypothesis which the
lecturer has unfolded to us with reference to the Influence of Space. As
he himself rightly says, in all these endeavours after a philosophy of
nature we are still, for the present, dealing with "scientific articles
of faith," concerning the validity of which different persons, according
to their subjective judgment and stage of culture, may have widely
divergent views. I believe that the solution of these fundamental
questions still lies as yet beyond the limits of our knowledge of nature,
and that we shall be obliged, for a long time yet to come, to content
ourselves with an "Ignoramus"--if not even with an "Ignorabimus."