PHYSICAL ILLUSTRATIONS 291 



of the atom which cannot really be associated with 

 movements in space as macroscopically conceived. 

 Something unknown is doing we don't know what — that is 

 what our theory amounts to. It does not sound a par- 

 ticularly illuminating theory. I have read something 

 like it elsewhere — 



The slithy toves 

 Did gyre and gimble in the wabe. 



There is the same suggestion of activity. There is the 

 same indefiniteness as to the nature of the activity and 

 of what it is that is acting. And yet from so unpromising 

 a beginning we really do get somewhere. We bring 

 into order a host of apparently unrelated phenomena; 

 we make predictions, and our predictions come off. 

 The reason — the sole reason — for this progress is that 

 our description is not limited to unknown agents 

 executing unknown activities, but numbers are scattered 

 freely in the description. To contemplate electrons 

 circulating in the atom carries us no further; but by 

 contemplating eight circulating electrons in one atom 

 and seven circulating electrons in another we begin to 

 realise the difference between oxygen and nitrogen. 

 Eight slithy toves gyre and gimble in the oxygen wabe; 

 seven in nitrogen. By admitting a few numbers even 

 "Jabberwocky" may become scientific. We can now 

 venture on a prediction; if one of its toves escapes, 

 oxygen will be masquerading in a garb properly be- 

 longing to nitrogen. In the stars and nebulae we do 

 find such wolves in sheep's clothing which might 

 otherwise have startled us. It would not be a bad 

 reminder of the essential unknownness of the funda- 

 mental entities of physics to translate it into "Jabber- 

 wocky"; provided all numbers — all metrical attributes 



