In Sir Oliver's great work, called "Life and Matter," he wrote: "But it appears now that an atom may break up into electric charges, and these again may some day be found capable of resolving themselves into pristine ether. In that case the ether alone persists. It is the most fundamental entity."
In another book called "Modern Views of Electricity" he said: "Ether is somehow affected by the immediate neighborhood of gross matter, and it appears to be =concentrated= inside it to an extent depending on the =density= of the matter."
So it is seen that Sir Oliver at this time believed that matter was compressed or condensed ether.
In my pamphlets I explained that the ether could not be compressed, as it was capable of passing through all substance, and that matter was not =more= of the ether, but instead was =less=, and that atoms were simply spots of pure space or "nothing," and that the ether or its moving lines or sheets simply whirled around on empty space while what was called a vacuum was really the habitat of real material, or the ether.
In 1907 Sir Oliver accepted this new version of the nature of matter, and it was the cause of much excitement in the British Association, so much so that the report reached America and Prof. Serviss wrote an article about it in the Boston Sunday American in October, 1907, in which he says: "The answer as recently given by Sir Oliver Lodge is amazing beyond belief. The solidest thing in existence, he avers, is the very thing which for generations has been universally regarded as the lightest, the most imperceptible, the most utterly tenuous and evanescent beyond all definition or computation--the ether!" And in the same article he says: "Matter, Prof. Osborne Reynolds has asserted, instead of being, as we innocently believe on the evidence of our senses, the only real and solid thing in nature is, in fact, the absence or deficiency of mass."
The following is an article by Sir Oliver Lodge in regard to spirits:
"Though for many years, ever since the eighties, I have tried all sorts of other methods of explaining these things, they have gradually been eliminated one after the other, and now no explanations remain except the simple one that the people who communicate are really the individuals they claim to be. Not always, of course. One has to prove them in every case. But still the conclusion is that survival of existence can be scientifically proved by actual psychical investigation.