2x8 PHYSICAL SCIENCE 



internal evidence seems to show that Lucretius 

 himself did not find the explanation easy to 

 reproduce : — 



Nee me animi fallit Graiorum obscura reperta 

 Difficile inlustrare Latinis versibus esse. 



If, however, in one aspect these modern 

 corpuscles may resemble the hard, impenetrable 

 atoms of the Greek philosopher and the Latin 

 poet, such a resemblance vanishes when we 

 identify them with the disembodied charges of 

 electricity, mathematically studied by Larmor and 

 Lorentz. If the corpuscle is a negative electron 

 — a disembodied ghost — an electric charge — we 

 enter a region of knowledge the bare existence 

 of which was unknown to the ancients. 



The hard particle of Democritus, which, as 

 late as the age of Newton, still served as a 

 working hypothesis, gradually failed to respond 

 to the demands made on its constitution by both 

 philosophers and physicists, in their search for a 

 conceptual model of the chemical atom. Pictures 

 of mere lumps of stuff, similar in kind to the 

 perception of matter-in-bulk given by our senses, 

 were no help to the theories of the metaphysician, 

 while the complexity of structure, demanded by 

 the facts of radiation as disclosed by the spectro- 

 scope, showed that an atom must be capable of 

 many and various modes of vibration. 



In extreme opposition to the hard Impenetrable 

 sphere of Democritus, we have Boscovlch's ideal- 

 istic conception of atoms as centres of force. This 

 theory gave too little scope for definite develop- 

 ment to serve permanently as a useful working 

 hypothesis, and, in face of the phenomena of 



