82 UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI BULLETIN 



poles, there need be any polar controversy. Not another 

 Peary and Cook imbroglio ! 



Since chemistry cannot consider all the manifestations of 

 the properties of matter, for my purpose to-day I am going 

 to define chemistry as that branch of natural or physical 

 science which considers the different kinds of matter and the 

 phenomena resulting from such difference in kind, or perhaps 

 in the light of to-day, the science which considers the two 

 kinds of matter into which all the other kinds have been re- 

 solved : the corpuscle, a negatively electrified particle of the 

 smallest mass known, and a positively electrified particle with 

 a mass about seventeen hundred times greater than the nega- 

 tively electrified particle. 



The charged particles under further investigation dis- 

 appear, the whole mass of these particles agreeing with the 

 view that the mass is due to the electrical charges alone. So 

 the conclusion is reached that matter is an aggregation of 

 positive and negative charges of electricity without any par- 

 ticles whatever. This conclusion has not been unchallenged. 

 The older view that the corpuscle is a definite quantity (mass) 

 of matter with a definite quantity (a unit charge) of negative 

 electricity still has adherents. 



If the particle disappears from the corpuscle, then the 

 forces, light, electricity, magnetism and what is usually called 

 matter would be but particular manifestations of unit electri- 

 cal charges! 



A recent critic has offered some observations on the newer 

 view that negative electrons, corpuscles, possess an inertia 

 which is entirely of electric origin — that is, do not possess 

 a particle of ordinary matter, in which it appears to him that 

 the proof requires considerably more support, both on the 

 experimental and on the theoretical side than it has yet re- 

 ceived. He says that for many purposes it is unnecessary to 

 define an electron further than to say that it possesses a 

 charge, but when the question of inertia is considered the size 



