Outside the latter, it is found in its pristine
purity only between the stars [suns] of the universe.... As its substance
is of a different kind from that known on earth, the inhabitants of the
latter, seeing _through it_, believe, in their illusion and ignorance, that
it is empty space. There is not one finger's breadth of void space in the
whole boundless universe."[21] "The mother-substance" is said, in this
treatise, to produce this aether of space as its seventh grade of density,
and all objective suns are said to have this for their "substance."
To any power of sight which we can bring to bear upon it, this koilon
appears to be homogeneous, though it is probably nothing of the kind, since
homogeneity can belong to the mother-substance alone. It is out of all
proportion denser than any other substance known to us, infinitely
denser--if we may be pardoned the expression; so much denser that it seems
to belong to another type, or order, of density. But now comes the
startling part of the investigation: we might expect matter to be a
densification of this koilon; it is nothing of the kind. Matter is not
koilon, but _the absence of koilon_, and at first sight, matter and space
appear to have changed places, and emptiness has become solidity, solidity
has become emptiness.
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