THE ELECTEICAL NATURE OF MATTER. 189 



masses of its negative corpuscles. Positive electricity as 

 apart from an atom does not seem to exist. It never seems 

 to fly free as the corpuscle does. Its nature is, to-day, 

 a mystery. 



What is gravitation? Again, the answer is not forth- 

 coming. The force of gravitation is minute and it is only 

 apparent to us because of the nearness to us of the over- 

 whelming mass of the earth. Still it ought to be capable 

 of explanation and the explanation has not yet arrived. 



Still, again, what are Life and Mind? There is nothing in 

 the foregoing pages to give us even the glimpse of an idea 

 of the physical basis of Life. It is unreasonable, however, 

 to expect too much for a theory still in its infancy, and we 

 can afford to marvel at the mysteries which it does explain, 

 and to give it on this account a large measure of acceptance. 



It ous;ht to be j ointecl out at the end of this chapter 

 that the theory of atomic disintegration is quite independ- 

 ent of the electronic theory we have .been considering. 

 Atomic disintegration postulates nothing beyond the con- 

 ception, familiar to chemists for the last hundred years, that 

 atoms exist. Once grant the existence of the chemist's 

 atom and the disintegration of the atom necessarily follows. 

 Neither has it any necessary connection with the facts of 

 radio-activity, the transmutation of the elements, or the 

 vast stores of intra-elemental energy. 



