THE STRUCTURE OF TEE WORLD-STUFF 279 



" Our action's spontaneous in atoms uranious, 

 Or radious, actinious or thorious; 

 But for others, the gleam of a heaven-sent beam 

 Must encourage their efforts laborious. 



" For many a day we've been slipping away 



While the savants still doz'd in their slumbers, 

 Till at last came a man with gold leaf and tin can, 

 And detected our infinite numbers." 



Thus the atoms in turn, we now clearly discern, 



Fly to bits with the utmost facility. 

 They wend on their way, and in flitting, display 



An absolute lack of stability. 



'Tis clear they should halt on the grave of old Dalton 



On their path to celestial spheres, 

 And a few thousand million — let's say a quadrillion — 



Should bedew it with reverent tears. 



But lest these views seem too somber and devoid of hope for the 

 future, we must not forget that we may be looking at but one side of 

 the mighty rhythm of nature. There may be also, still veiled from us, 

 the compensating process by which atoms are formed and developed. 

 This the author seems to feel and to express in his final verse : 



There's nothing facetious in the way that Lucretius 



Imagined the Chaos to quiver 

 And electrons to blunder, together, asunder, 



In building up atoms forever. 



The imaginative sketch of the atom which I have drawn must not 

 be regarded as an accurate photograph. Many details are imperfectly 

 known, many doubtless erroneous. But in its general outlines it 

 reproduces the views of the foremost investigators, and it has proved 

 eminently successful in unraveling the most extensive and perplexing 

 body of facts that has ever been accumulated in so short a time. 



But even when all difficulties shall have been smoothed away, and 

 the electron enthroned above the atom, we shall not have reached the 

 end. Even now we begin to hear discussions as to the shape of the 

 electron, some holding it spherical, others flattened like the earth. 

 There is, in fact, no final theory. " Every ultimate fact/' says Emer- 

 son, " is only the first of a new series. Every general law only a partic- 

 ular fact of some more general law presently to disclose itself." We 

 live in a succession of infinities. The earth with all its multiplicity 

 is but a small part of the solar system ; that is but an insignificant unit 

 in a mighty stellar group. And so within the smallest sensible particle 

 of matter is the world of atoms, within the world of atoms the world 

 of electrons. Who shall set a boundary in the one direction or in the 

 other ? 



