ON THE ORGANIZATION OF ATOMS AND MOLE- 
CULES. 
PROF. A. E. DOLBEAR, 
CoLLeGE Hitt, Mass. 
In his dialogues on The Plurality of Worlds, Fontenelle rep- 
resents the sages of antiquity as being spectators at the opera, 
watching the play of the Universe. The subject is supposed 
to be Phaeton carried away by the winds. The dancer who rep- 
resents Phaeton is made to fly away through the upper part of 
the scenes, much to the admiration of the lookers-on. The 
wise ones now begin to speculate, and attempt to explain the 
extraordinary movement of Phaeton. An Aristotelian says, 
“Phaeton has an occult quality which carries him away.” <A 
Pythagorean says, “Phaeton is composed of certain numbers 
that make him move upwards.’”’ Another one says, ‘‘ Phaeton 
has a longing for the top of the theatre, and is not easy until 
he gets there.” He explains the universe by love and hate. 
Another one says, “ Phaeton has not a natural tendency to fly, 
but he prefers flying to leaving the top of the theatre empty,” 
—which is the doctrine of Nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum. 
After all these come Descartes and some other modern philoso- 
phers ; and they say, “ Phaeton goes up because he is pulled up 
by a weight that goes down behind the scenes.” 
This is the mechanical philosophy that has been employed so 
successfully im the unravelling of phenomena once thought to 
be altogether occult. It is the philosophy that explains every 
phenomenon of vzsz/e motion as due to some antecedent mo- 
tion, which may or may not itself be visible. Since the time 
of Sir Isaac Newton and the discovery of the laws of motion, 
there has been no room for mysterious forces operating to give 
movements to matter of visible magnitude. Guiding spirits 
like Kepler’s are no more thought of as being necessary to 
account for them than are Arabian genii. 
When, however, we come to the phenomena manifested by 
atoms and molecules, it is plain that the mechanical philosophy 
