336 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



thought of as immutably fixed for all time, but so were animal and 

 plant species before Darwin. The growing evidence for this larger 

 view of matter, though recent, is already too strong to be longer ignored. 

 The burden of proof is gradualy shifting, and to Alice's question, 

 " Why ? " comes back the equally pertinent " Why not ? " of the March 

 Hare. 



To gather a little together: The electron has but a thousandth 

 part of the inertia of the lightest known material atom, and this 

 inertia it doubtless borrows from the kindly ether and does not 

 hold in its own right. Its behavior is that of an atom of negative 

 electricity pure and simple. Its form is spherical and not spheroidal. 

 Its size is probably less than one ten-million-millionths of an inch. 

 When revolving briskly enough in an orbit within the atom it gives us 

 colored light of highest purity. When violently jostling irregularly 

 about it gives us white light. Without it all light would be impossible. 



We believe we have found electricity free from matter, but never 

 yet matter free from electricity. Finally comes the suggestion that 

 matter no less than life may be undergoing a slow but endless evolution. 



Some of these things and many others have led physicists to sus- 

 pect that if all electricity were removed from matter nothing would be 

 left, that the material atom is an electrical structure and nothing more. 



There are, however, many stubborn questions to which answers must 

 somehow be found before the so-called electron theory of matter can 

 be accepted unreservedly. As it stands it is at once a most brilliant 

 and promising hypothesis, but has not yet reached the full stature of a 

 theory. 



Should it hold good, the material atom with its revolving electrons 

 becomes the epitome of the universe. The architecture of the solar 

 system and of the atom, the very great and the very small, reveals the 

 same marvelous plan, the same exquisite workmanship. The conserva- 

 tion of energy becomes an ethereal law and the ether the abiding place 

 of the universal store of energy. 



To end as we began, we have matter and electricity which some 

 day may be one, and ether and energy. Of these we hope some time 

 to build in theory a reasonable world to match the one we now so little 

 understand. 



When all the interrelations among matter, ether, electricity are 

 separated out and quantitatively expressed, we believe our work will 

 be complete. 



Such, then, is the confession of faith, the very far-distant hope of 

 the modern physicist. 



