SCIENCE AS A SYMBOL AND A LAW 17 



atoms, ethers, and ethereal vortices has grown so 

 steadily that little objection has been made to the 

 recent creation of a whole new class of such hypothet- 

 ical objects, called indifferently ions, corpuscles, elec- 

 trons, or particles, which are assumed to be the con- 

 stituent elements of the hypothetical atom. Of the 

 three classes of objects it is, at the present time, the 

 existence of the sensible bodies which is in danger 

 of repudiation. This is the case not only in the minds 

 of the thoughtless but in those of the leading men 

 of science. For example, Sir J. J. Thomson, in the 

 preface to his Conduction of Electricity Through 

 Gases, says : " The possession of a charge by the ions 

 increases so much the ease with which they can be 

 traced and their properties studied that, as the reader 

 will see, we know far more about the ion than we do 

 about the uncharged molecule." Such a statement is 

 on a parallel with the remark made to me by another 

 distinguished physicist, that we know far more about 

 the ether and the atom than we do about sensible 

 matter. This is true, and in the same way as a 

 Frankenstein might say of a mechanical man which 

 he had conceived and constructed, I know more about 

 him than I do about a real man. 



Such confusion of thought is directly traceable to 

 the fact that many men of science have forgotten the 

 distinction between the creations of nature and the 

 creations of their imaginations. We can never say 



