WHAT IS MATTER? 33 



must be such as to allow of the development and interchange discov- 

 ered. Matter can not be ver}^ dead, it can not be blankly non-con- 

 scious, it would seem, if everywhere and at all times it is, in the ordi- 

 nary routine of the world, nourishing and stimulating life and con- 

 sciousness, which in their turn dissolve into mere matter in the same 

 normal way. 



Such, too briefly and imperfectly stated, are the contributions of 

 philosophy, and its component and ancillary sciences, to our knowledge 

 of matter. Next we turn to the physical sciences themselves, physics, 

 chemistry and new-born chemico-physics, and find, as will presently 

 appear, a singularly impressive confirmation of the results set forth. 

 This should not surprise us. It merely adds one more to the many 

 instances where philosophy's reasoned conclusions have proved prophetic 

 of the more concretely reached results of experimental science. The 

 former, glancing over the promised land throughout its broad extent, 

 spies out its prominent landmarks, and sets them up as goals to guide 

 the slow and laborious but sure occupation which it falls to the lot of 

 the latter to undertake. Each task yields its own delights, and each 

 performs its peculiar service. Where both are indispensable, only the 

 cramped mind will seek to belittle either. 



Nearly two and a half centuries ago, in 1658, to be accurate, Bos- 

 covich, the great Italian administrator, diplomat and physicist, set 

 forth and ably defended the view that atoms are but forces, each con- 

 centrated in a mathematical point, and held apart by their mutual 

 repulsions. The view did not fail of its adherents, numbering among 

 them names as great as that of Faraday. But even if the prejudices 

 of an imaginative race had allowed it a fair hearing, which they did 

 not, the state of science was not ripe for the general acceptance of the 

 theory. Electricity did not exist for science, and countless hours of 

 research had still to be labored through before a sufficient weight of 

 experimental facts could be accumulated to outbalance our tribal idol. 

 So stiff-necked is an inborn bent of human nature. Besides, Boscovich 

 delayed the triumph of his theory, in its essential principle, in my 

 judgment, by confining his force atoms to mathematical points, and 

 denying them spatial occupancy, the fundamental attribute of matter : 

 a course the more to be regretted, as the denial is unnecessary, indeed 

 contrary to plain experience. 



The status of Boscoviclrs theory, and its more or less modified suc- 

 cessors, remained practically unchanged till the end of the nineteenth 

 and the marvelous beginning years of the present century, a few of the 

 best minds of each generation upholding it, but the large majority of 

 physical scientists, including men of unsurpassed eminence, according 

 it a neglect more or less contemptuous. But these recent years have 

 been bringing about a change. A number of physicists of the first 



VOL. LXXII. — 3. 



