156 PHYSICS OF THE ELECTRON 



and led them to conceive of the notions of mass and force which 

 appeared a long while the most fundamental, those from which all 

 the others ought to raminate. As the means of investigation have 

 increased, as the more hidden facts have been discovered, we have 

 thought for a long while to be able to reduce them to the old laws, 

 to be able in fact to find an explanation of mechanical origin. 



The actual tendency, of making the electromagnetic ideas to 

 occupy the preponderating place, is justified, as I have sought to 

 show, by the solidity of the double base on which rests the idea of 

 the electron; on the one hand by the exact knowledge of the electro- 

 magnetic ether which we owe to Faraday, Maxwell, and Hertz, and 

 on the other hand by the experimental evidence brought forward by 

 the recent investigations into the granular structure of electricity. 

 Moreover, this assurance which we express when considering the 

 past is increased, if it is possible, when we consider the future. 



Already all views, not only of the ether, but of matter, source and 

 receiver of luminous waves, obtain an immediate interpretation 

 which mechanics is powerless to give, and this mechanics itself 

 appears to-day as a first approximation, largely sufficing in all cases 

 of motion of matter taken in mass, but for which a more complete 

 expression must be sought in the dynamics of the electron. 



Although still very recent, the conceptions of which I have sought 

 to give a collected idea are about to penetrate to the very heart of the 

 entire physics, and to act as a fertile germ in order to crystallize 

 around it, in a new order, facts very far removed from one another. 



Falling in ground well prepared to receive it, in the ether of Fara- 

 day, Maxwell, and Hertz, the idea of the electron, an electrified 

 movable centre which experiment to-day allows us to lay hold of 

 individually, constitutes the tie between the ether and matter formed 

 of a group of electrons. 



This idea has taken an immense development in the last few years, 

 which causes it to break the framework of the old physics to pieces, 

 and to overturn the established order of ideas and laws in order to 

 branch out again in an organization which one foresees to be simple, 

 harmonious, and fruitful. 



