TENDENCIES OF MODERN PHYSICS 61 



theories is that the indivisible unit of matter is so small 

 that it can be dealt with experimentally and mathe- 

 matically in aggregates only. So when he devises an 

 apparatus so delicate as to detect the action of a single 

 particle the size of the so-called chemical atom, he 

 forces us to adopt for the real atom a smaller unit 

 whose individual variations will be beneath our obser- 

 vation. The unit of matter becomes just one degree 

 further removed from matter as we know it. Instead 

 of squaring our hypotheses with the sensible proper- 

 ties of matter, we may thus more easily make matter a 

 purely transcendental quantity which we create ac- 

 cording to our own imaginations. Would it not be bet- 

 ter frankly to say the material universe is merely a 

 world of ideas, an embodiment of intangible motion, 

 energy, and electricity, rather than to keep up the 

 fiction that the electron is the ultimate unit of sub- 

 stance ? 



Apparently the chemical molecule is a well-defined 

 point in the regular divisibility of matter where cer- 

 tain physical apparatus, as the balance, fail to record 

 variations in so small a body; but, by the use of 

 chemical appliances, we are able to take note of still 

 smaller masses, which have been named the atoms of 

 the chemical molecules. At this point these methods 

 become too gross, and we next have recourse to the 

 electrification of the gaseous atoms by the X-rays or 

 by radium, and can then detect variations in these 



