82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



toward the unraveling of the great puzzle. Those who know most are 

 least hopeful that we shall ever know all, but many will subscribe to the 

 statement that the resolution into electrons is the last station suspected 

 at the present time on the road which we are travelling. It is an in- 

 teresting question, therefore, to consider what we shall have accom- 

 plished when we have resolved man by analytical methods until we can 

 name each one of the electrons of which this remarkable being may 

 possibly be composed. 



In the distant future some Super-Zeiss may possibly make a lens 

 more powerful and strange than Aladdin's lamp. In its focus, a man, 

 with electrons as large as coffee-beans, would be but the transparent 

 ghost of his real self, and the rush and swirl of his elephantine heart and 

 the monstrous hailstorms rushing in and out of the elastic cloud-like 

 lungs would startle and confuse even the hardened physiologist of those 

 days. Under the circumstances the self-control constantly employed 

 by every good observer might easily leave him and his cries of aston- 

 ishment would probably be answered by cataclysmic tossings among 

 huge masses of the illuminated brain of the man who was told to keep 

 still and pay no attention to the professor. 



The knowledge implied in all this transcends the whole of human 

 experience, but there is no man of science worthy the name, who would 

 not welcome it, or who does not hope that some day we shall under- 

 stand these things better than now. If we throw ourselves into the 

 future when the sort of knowledge to be got with the Super-Zeiss Il- 

 luminating Magnifier shall have become common property, we can 

 imagine even the men on the street possessed, not only of astronomical 

 acquaintance with living bodies, but also with the world in which these 

 bodies live. These super-men may know that certain changes in the 

 movement of the surrounding electrons are invariably followed by cer- 

 tain movements of the electrons in the brains and hearts of their fellow- 

 men ; they may know exactly what torrents and back-eddies of cor- 

 puscles occur when two friends who have not seen one another in 

 twenty years meet on the pavement, and they may be able to describe 

 in much detail the wild turmoil in the nervous system of the lunatic. 

 But they will not be able to see the joy which friends experience on 

 meeting nor the delusions of the insane. We may confidently expect 

 them to have their own joys, sorrows, and imaginings, and that they 

 may know what the physical concomitants of pleasure and pain in 

 others are, but no feeling or thought will be theirs except their own. In 

 this respect they shall be no wiser than we are, for we too can tell pleas- 

 ure and pain when we meet them, but whereas we recognize them by 

 smiles, laughter, lined faces and tears, the men of to-morrow may 

 know these things by the movements among electrons. 



Although physical analysis of men can never give us more than the 



