194 SIR WILLIAM CROOKES ON PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 



matter; and, thinking of the little, hard, impenetrable atom of Lucre- 

 tius, and the forces or forms of energy appertaining to it, he felt him- 

 self impelled to reject the idea of the existence of the nucleus altogether, 

 and to think only of the forces and forms of energy usually associated 

 therewith. He was led to the conclusion that this view necessarily 

 involved the surmise that the atoms are not merely nuitually penetra- 

 ble, but that each atom, so to say, extends throughout all space, yet 

 always retaining its own center of force. ' 



A view of the constitution of matter which recommended itself to 

 Faraday as preferable to the one ordinarily held appears to me to be 

 exactly the view I endeavor to picture as the constitution of spiritual 

 beings. Centers of intellect, will, energy, and power, each mutually 

 penetrable, while at the same time permeating what we call space, 

 but each center retaining its own individuality, persistence of self, and 

 memory. Whether these intelligent centers of the various spiritual 

 forces which in their aggregate go to make up man's character or 

 karma are also associated in any way with the forms of energy which, 

 centered, form the material atom — whether these spiritual entities are 

 material, not in the crude, gross sense of Lucretius, but material as 

 sublimated through the piercing intellect of Faraday — is one of those 

 mysteries which to us mortals will perhaps ever remain an unsolved 

 problem. 



My next speculation is more difficult, and is addressed to those who 

 not only take too terrestrial a view, but who deny the plausibility — nay, 

 the possibility — of the existence of an unseen world at all. I reply we 

 are demonstrably standing on the brink, at any rate, of one unseen 

 world. I do not here speak of a spiritual or immaterial world. I speak 

 of the world of the infinitely little, which must be still called a mate- 

 rial world, although matter as therein existing or perceptible is some- 

 thing which our limited faculties do not enable us to conceive. It is 

 the world — I do not say of molecular forces as opposed to molar, but 

 of forces whose action lies mainly outside the limit of human percep- 

 tion, as opposed to forces evident to the gross perception of human 

 organisms. I hardly know how to make clear to myself or to you the 

 difference in the apparent laws of the universe which would follow 

 upon a mere ditference of bulk in the observer. Such an observer I 

 nuist needs imagine as best I can. I shall not attempt to rival the 

 vividness of the great satirist who, from a postulated difference of size 

 far less considerable, deduced in Gulliver\s Travels the absurdity, and 

 the mere relativity, of so much in human morals, politics, society. But 

 I shall take courage from the example of my predecessor in this chair, 

 Prof. William James, of Harvard, from whom later I shall cite a most 

 striking parable of precisely the type I seek. 



You must p ermit me, then, an homunculus on whom to hang my 



n may say, in passing, that the modern vortex atom also fulfills these conditions. 



