ATOMIC WORLDS AND THEIR MOTIONS. 189 



lias taken fifteen thousand years to reach us, is concealed from 

 us forever. 



But, as here in an outward and ever-enlarging scale, so in the 

 molecules and atoms downward, and ever diminishing in size, we 

 find system after system inclosed one in the other, like the ivory 

 balls in a Chinese puzzle, downward, ever downward, and there 

 is no end ! We shall never be able to exhaust the possibilities of 

 minuteness. The atoms of elements may consist of ether-atoms ; 

 indeed, the very elements themselves may not be elements in the 

 true sense at all, but compound bodies, as has, indeed, been very 

 long suspected. 



Now, let us once more take our magic wand ; let us imagine 

 one of these tiny atoms enlarged to the size of this globe, of this 

 earth, on which we live. A magnification of one trillion diame- 

 ters would more than suffice. It would now, with its companion- 

 atoms, represent a planetary system, and the molecules in a gas 

 would stand in about the same relationship to each other as the 

 fixed' stars over us, which pursue their unknown courses; the 

 little air-bubble in the glass of water becomes a star-cluster like 

 the one in which our sun is situated. The circle of little bubbles 

 around the margin of this glass would represent such a gathering 

 of star-clusters as we now see before us in the milky way. 



The galaxy in a glass of water ! On what does the glass rest 

 in which our starry firmament has gathered ? Who will take it 

 to his lips ? We know not ; we can not see beyond our tiny bub- 

 ble, and the mere fact of being able to understand that we never 

 can hope to look beyond it presupposes a great deal of under- 

 standing. 



It will be worth our while to have a look around on our en- 

 larged atom. We live on this planet of ours, but what entitles 

 us to draw a line or fix a limit as to the possible or impossible in 

 this endless, this infinite series of worlds with which we are here 

 confronted ? If we could descend on to one of these atoms, our 

 bodies diminished in proportion, might we not, tuoidd we not, find 

 there another earth grouped with its companion-atoms into a 

 stellar system of perhaps wondrous regularity ? That world in 

 which a conscious being exists is determined by the hi7id of this 

 consciousness, and by the character of the impressions which it is 

 capable of receiving. We can not well think of perceptions other 

 than our own, because we can not go beyond the limit of our own 

 selves, but we can well imagine a world in which sensations like 

 ours may succeed each other in far greater rapidity. 



We can imagine a creature which in one second, during which 

 we only receive at the utmost ten different impressions, is organ- 

 ized to receive thousands, millions, or billions. That means that 

 in one thousandth, one millionth, or one billionth of the time we 



