THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD 131 



tinuity to material bodies as well as to space and time. 

 It is quite possible to imagine an element of this new 

 electric matter to be composed of equal quantities of 

 positive and negative electrons, whose motions are so 

 balanced as to make all material attributes vanish and 

 produce a quasi-annihilation of matter. 



Lastly, when the statement is made that the electron 

 is merely a local modification of the all-pervading 

 ether, some idea should be given us as to the nature of 

 this modification. If it is of the character of a strain, 

 no meaning is conveyed unless this strain is subject to 

 the laws of static or kinetic mechanics. But we have 

 no knowledge of a static strain which fulfils the re- 

 quirements of matter, especially that it must be localized 

 at definite points and must be uncreatable and inde- 

 structible; of kinetic strains, the only one at present 

 available is the vortex ring of Helmholtz and Kelvin. 

 To imply that matter is electricity and that electricity is 

 a static strain or a vortex ring, is to make an impossible 

 assumption and is reasoning in a circle. If the vortex 

 ring of matter failed chiefly because Maxwell said: 

 " That at best it was a mode of motion and not matter 

 as we know it," what chance has this new type to sur- 

 vive criticism? 



Although matter appears to us as a continuous quan- 

 tity or at least as divisible far below our present 

 methods of experimentation, still it is convenient to 

 give to the smallest observable portion of matter some 



