A LITTLE MATTER. 539 



of the ultimate particles of matter out of which worlds are formed, 

 reveal the speculative tendency as well as the intellectual status of the 

 human mind in different epochs of the history of civilization. The 

 present era might be designated as an interrogatory age, for the evident 

 tendency is to question eagerly, to accept nothing on the evidence of 

 tradition, and but little, comparatively, on the merits of faith. 



Plausible explanations of various phenomena have so often been 

 accepted with confidence, only to be overthrown and supplanted by 

 others equally unstable, that the mind has become suspicious, and de- 

 mands the most rigid physical tests to corroborate new theories. The 

 experimental feature of scientific study has thus attained an importance 

 and perfection never before approached, and this cause largely con- 

 tributes to popularize even the most abstruse subject of inquiry. 

 The object of this brief paper is to present, albeit in a feeble manner, 

 the claims of one of these little paths of knowledge to the exploration 

 of the general reader, who, like the summer tourist, sometimes prefers 

 to leave the beaten track, to enjoy the novelty of a rougher road. 



The learned judge who, being requested to define the distinction 

 between mind and matter, replied, " One is no matter, the other 

 never mind," solved the difficulty in a terse if not very satisfactory or 

 exhaustive way. The question, " What is matter ? " is one that has 

 exercised the intellects of the profoundest thinkers in all ages, and the 

 conundrum is, apparently, as far from being definitely answered in 

 this nineteenth century as in the classic days of the Greek philosophers. 

 It would seem, indeed, that the modern views of matter, based upon 

 strictly scientific data and mathematical reasoning, have approached 

 very closely to those propounded by the Attic philosophers, which 

 were evolved purely from the inner consciousness of the poetic sages, 

 the ancient theories being rather expressions of sentiment or feeling 

 than of observed realities or facts. We may find a parallelism to this 

 in the grand musical compositions of the old masters : knowing nothing 

 of the modern science of music or the laws of acoustics, they felt and 

 recorded harmonious combinations which are now shown by analysis 

 to conform to most rigid mathematical laws. The poetical fancies of 

 Lucretius on " The Nature of Things," which have been preserved to 

 us through a lapse of two thousand years, will receive new interest in 

 the light of modern scientific revelation. 



The delicacy of the apparatus devised by physicists and the refine- 

 ment of experimental demonstration rendered possible thereby are 

 among the greatest marvels of this wonderful age. The physicist is 

 pushing his researches into paths which but a few years since were 

 thought to be for ever hidden somewhere in the vast realm of the 

 " unknowable," and the boundary line between so-called physical and 

 metaphysical science is continually narrowing. Just as the skilled 

 mountaineer or the aeronaut ascends gradually into the rarefied upper 

 atmosphere, in order that the system may accommodate itself to its 



