INFLUENCE ON RECENT SCIENCE 99 



which, if it means anything to mankind, is his best 

 expression of verity and fact. Yet we see Descartes, 

 an illustrious man of science, devoting his talents to 

 the exposition of an openly confessed fiction. And his 

 reputation rests on the belief that he has spun a web 

 of fancy so subtly that it could deceive us. While 

 additional knowledge has been acquired by us, no one 

 has shown that modern theorists have discovered a 

 method different and more trustworthy than that of 

 Descartes. We recognize that many of the laws he 

 formulated are false and that most of his facts have 

 been corrected or disproved, but we should remember 

 that modern hypotheses also are developed as a means 

 of attacking unexplored regions of science where our 

 own knowledge is either meager or false. For ex- 

 ample, he felt it necessary to find a cause for the 

 recently discovered sun-spots and then extended its 

 action so as to change a vortex into a primitive ter- 

 restrial planet. A better knowledge of these spots on 

 the sun proves that his whole reasoning was false, or 

 shall I say childish. But was it less plausible at that 

 time or even less childish than is now our most recent 

 theory; that an atom of matter is a system of cor- 

 puscles, each of which is a unit of free negative elec- 

 tricity moving with the velocity of light, and that this 

 denatured bit of electricity is nothing but a localized 

 strain in an ethereal plenum. Let us examine such a 

 postulate as we would a similar statement if it had been 



