132 The Ottawa Naturalist. [October 



are insigriificant as compared with the internal attractions and 



repulsions of the electric monads. Each atom of matter is the 



theatre of energetic forces, however inert may be its external 



relations. 



Unity the Aim of Science. 



"Will this bold attempt to unify physical nature last?" 

 asked Mr. Balfour. A world built-up out of sixty or seventy 

 eternally different chemical elements is just as rational a concep- 

 tion as if it were constructed out of a single medium : but men of 

 science have always been impatient of multiplicity. Reduction of 

 plurality to unity is a scientific instinct not to be ignored. 



Experience Untrustworthy as a Scientific Basis. 



The President then considered the basis of experience upon 

 which scientific research founds its laborious investigations. 

 Scientists formerly held that to go behind experience was impos- 

 sible, yet Faraday's disbelief in that dictum led to the modern 

 electr'cal theory of matter. Gravity itself, says the physicist to- 

 day, must be explained, it is no longer held to be an ultimate pro- 

 perty of matter admitting of no explanation and requiring none. 

 Matter itself, \\ masses or in minute particles, molar or molecular, 

 is resolved by recent science into that which is not matter at all. 

 The minute particle, called the atom, is a relatively vast theatre in 

 which the sub-atoms or electrical monads perform their evolutions. 

 The minuteness of these monads may be judged from Prof. J. J. 

 Thomson's statement that radium throws off, as cathode rays, 

 streams of these corpuscles, each of which has a mass of about 

 one-thousandth part of the hydrogen atom and thus they are the 

 smallest bodies known to science. (See Harper's Mag., 1. c. p. 279). 



Science Contrasts with Common Experience. 



Matter, as viewed by scientists, could hardly be more diver- 

 gent then it is from prevailing ideas or common experience, yet all 

 science must inevitably be based upon experience, which is really 

 but another name for the perceptions of the bodily senses. 



Experience Wholly Illusory. 



Starting from experience, scientific thought yields conclusions 

 which prove experience to be misleading. *' Our knowledge of 

 reality" Mr. Balfour pointed out, *' is thus based upon illusion, 



