5oo POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



This view must, however, be profoundly modified if we accept the 

 electric theory of matter. We can then no longer hold that if the in- 

 ternal energy of a sun were as far as possible converted into heat either 

 by its contraction under the stress of gravitation or by chemical reac- 

 tions between its elements or by any other interatomic force; and that 

 were the heat so generated to be dissipated, as in time it must be, 

 through infinite space, its whole energy would be exhausted. On the 

 contrary, the amount thus lost would be absolutely insignificant com- 

 pared with what remained stored up within the separate atoms. The 

 system in its corporate capacity would become bankrupt — the wealth 

 of its individual constituents would be scarcely diminished. They 

 would lie side by side, without movement, without chemical affinity; 

 yet each one, howsoever inert in its external relations, the theater of 

 violent motions, and of powerful internal forces. 



Or put the same thought in another form: when the sudden ap- 

 pearance of some new star in the telescopic field gives notice to the 

 astronomer that he, and, perhaps, in the whole universe, he alone, is 

 witnessing the conflagration of a world; the tremendous forces by 

 which this far-off tragedy is being accomplished must surely move his 

 awe. Yet not only would the members of each separate atomic system 

 pursue their relative course unchanged, while the atoms themselves 

 were thus riven violently apart in flaming vapor, but the forces by 

 which such a world is shattered are really negligible compared with 

 those by which each atom of it is held together. 



In common, therefore, with all other living things we seem to be 

 practically concerned chiefly with the feebler forces of nature, and with 

 energy in its least powerful manifestations. Chemical affinity and 

 cohesion are on this theory no more than the slight residual effects of 

 the internal electrical forces which keep the atom in being. Gravita- 

 tion, though it be the shaping force which concentrates nebula? into 

 organized systems of suns and satellites, is trifling compared with the 

 attractions and repulsions with which we are familiar between elec- 

 trically charged bodies; while these again sink into insignificance be- 

 side the attractions and repulsions between the electric monads them- 

 selves. The irregular molecular movements which constitute heat, on 

 which the very possibility of organic life seems absolutely to hang, and 

 in whose transformations applied science is at present so largely con- 

 cerned, can not rival the kinetic energy stored within the molecules 

 themselves. This prodigious mechanism seems outside the range of 

 our immediate interests. We live, so to speak, merely on its fringe. 

 It has for us no promise of utilitarian value. It will not drive our 

 mills; we can not harness it to our trains. Yet not less on that ac- 

 count does it stir the intellectual imagination. The starry heavens 

 have, from time immemorial, moved the worship or the wonder of man- 



