PRESIDENT 8 ADDRESS — SECTION B. 53 



solids which appear to our senses and to our most refined 

 and delicate instruments as perfectly homogeneous : more- 

 over, the kinetic theory, not only of gases, but of all 

 states and conditions of matter, has received general recogni- 

 tion. 



Yet another theory will, I am sure, commend itself to 

 your earnest attention — one I have thought a good deal 

 about for some years past, and which has been touched upon 

 by Mendelejeff eighteen months ago when lecturing at the 

 Royal Institution in England. 



The idea may be considered a wild speculation by some ; 

 but I am bound to believe, judging by analogy with the 

 magnificent conceptions presented to us by modern astronomy, 

 and by the observed behaviour of matter as shown lately by 

 the work and discoveries of Crookes, Thomson, Ostwald, 

 Arrhenius, Van't Hoff, and many others, that, just as the 

 systems of worlds, suns, stars, and planets roll in limitless 

 space, so rolls the atom, but at enormously increased velocities 

 in symmetrical order like double stars, or in systems com- 

 parable to suns and their accompanying satellites — the com- 

 plete, self-existent, undissociated molecule being comparable 

 to a given solar system coursing through space. 



The work of Maxwell, Faraday, Helmholtz, Lodge, 

 Fitzgerald, Hertz, and Sir William Thomson, men who, like 

 Huxley's ideal possessor of a liberal education, can " spin the 

 gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind," all 

 contribute towards clearing up the mystery surrounding the 

 thing daily handled and observed by the chemist — the 

 familiar thing we call " matter." 



Putting aside for the moment the idea as to whether the 

 atoms are or are not portions of the ether differentiated off 

 from the rest by reason of their vortex motion, we have in 

 the omnipresent ether, at any rate, the space, the playground, 

 for the atom, whose unseen but energetic movements we have 

 learned to speak of as heat and chemical action. 



Having, then, granted a place in the universe for the 

 ubiquitous atom, the chemist must endeavour, however 

 dimly it may be, to picture to his mind its relative position, 

 its own proper motion, its translatory motion, and, above all, 

 its influence upon the ether when rocked by the waves set 

 up by vibrating masses of atoms at a distance. When this 

 is known we shall be able perhaps to account for the specific 

 differences presented to us by matter. 



In its simples^ aspect we may think of the substance of the 



