ARE THE ELEMENTS THAN SMUT ABLE? 49 



as consisting of bits of electric charge in rapid motion, owing their 

 special properties to the number of such bits within them, and also, no 

 doubt, to the particular orbits described by the electrons. If space 

 permitted it would be interesting to show how admirably the periodicity 

 of the properties of the elements, as expressed in Mendelejeffs table, 

 can be accounted for on the basis of an increasing number of like 

 electrons constituting the atoms of the successive elements. We have 

 molecules consisting, at the simplest, of two such systems within the 

 sphere of each other's attraction, perhaps something as we have double 

 stars in the heavens. 



A possible explanation of the puzzling property of valence is offered, 

 in that an atom less one electron, or plus one electron, may be consid- 

 ered as electrically charged, and therefore capable of attracting other 

 bodies, oppositely charged, to form electrically neutral systems. An 

 atom less two electrons, or with two electrons in excess, would have 

 twice the ability to combine, it would be what we call divalent, and so 

 on. An electronic structure of the atom furnishes a basis from which 

 a plausible explanation of the refraction, polarization and rotation of 

 the plane of polarized light may be logically derived. Hitherto ex- 

 planations for the observed facts have been either wanting or more or 

 less unsatisfactory. For instance, grant the actual existence of tetra- 

 hedral carbon atoms, with different groups asymmetrically arranged 

 at the apices, and yet we can not see any good and valid reason why 

 such a structure should be able to rotate the plane of polarized light. 

 Grant that the molecule consists of systems of corpuscles traveling in 

 well-defined orbits, and we see at once how light, consisting of other 

 electrons of the same kind, traversing this maze, must be influenced. 



Adopting this theory of corpuscles or electrons, not a concept of 

 any value need be abandoned. On the contrary, the theory furnishes 

 us with plausible explanations of many facts previously unexplained. 

 Its influence is all in a forward direction towards a simplification and 

 unification of our knowledge of nature. 



A few words must be said regarding the old, the threadbare, argu- 

 ment which, of course, is cited against the electron theory. The 

 materialist says he simply can not accept a theory which obliges him 

 to give up the idea of the existence of matter ; he says the table is there 

 because he can see it and feel it and that must end the discussion for 

 any one with common sense and moderately good judgment. Now it 

 is the reverse of common sense to let that end the discussion, and our 

 materialist is pluming himself on precisely those qualities which he 

 most conspicuously lacks. He assumes the obnoxious theory to involve 

 consequences which it does not involve and then condemns it because 

 of those consequences. As a rule it is because he knows little about it, 

 and has thought less, that he assumes the electron theory to be pure 

 idealism in an ingenious disguise, that form of idealism which asserts 



VOL. LXIX.— 4. 



