ON ATOMS. 



understand how anything could get out of the way of 

 anything else. 



Hermione. Do come back to our dear atoms. I love 

 these atoms : the delicate little creatures ! There is 

 something so fanciful, so fairy-like about them. 



Hermogenes. Well they have their idiosyncrasies. I 

 mean, they obey the laws of their being. They comport 

 themselves according to their primary constitution. They 

 conform to the fixed rule implanted in them in the in- 

 stant of their creation. They act and react on each 

 other according to the rigorously exact, mathematically 

 determinate relations laid down for them db initio. They 

 work out the preconceived scheme of the universe by 

 their their col 



Hermione. Their? Stop, stop ! my dear Hermogenes. 

 Where will you land us 1 Obey laws ! Do they know 

 them 1 Can they remember them ? How else can they 

 obey them? Comport themselves according to their 

 primary constitution ! Well, that is so far intelligible : 

 they are as they are, and not as they are not. Conform 

 to a fixed rule ! But then they must be able to apply 

 the rule as the case arises. Act and react according to 



number of human beings living at the end of the hundredth gene- 

 ration, commencing from a single pair, doubling at each generation 

 (say in thirty years), and allowing for each man, woman, and child 

 an average space of four feet in height, and one foot square, would 

 form a vertical column, having for its base the whole surface of the 

 earth and sea spread out into a plane, and for its height 3674 times 

 the sun's distance from the earth ! The number of human strata 

 thus piled one on the other would amount to 460,790,000,000,000. 



