SIDELIGHTS ON RELATIVITY

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relativity as opposed to the ether of Lorentz consists in this, that
the state of the former is at every place determined by connections
with the matter and the state of the ether in neighbouring places,
which are amenable to law in the form of differential equations;
whereas the state of the Lorentzian ether in the absence of
electromagnetic fields is conditioned by nothing outside itself,
and is everywhere the same. The ether of the general theory of
relativity is transmuted conceptually into the ether of Lorentz if
we substitute constants for the functions of space which describe
the former, disregarding the causes which condition its state.
Thus we may also say, I think, that the ether of the general theory
of relativity is the outcome of the Lorentzian ether, through
relativation.

As to the part which the new ether is to play in the physics of
the future we are not yet clear. We know that it determines the
metrical relations in the space-time continuum, e.g. the configurative