244 THE NEW KNOWLEDGE. 



gradual accretion of other corpuscles and the storage pf the 

 requisite energy through vast stretches of time. An obj ection 

 has been urged against the possibility of the growth of atoms 

 on the ground that if the lightest atoms gradually grew into 

 the heaviest there should be an infinite number of transition- 

 forms from hydrogen to uranium, and we find, on the con- 

 trary, that the 70 odd elements are sharply defined. This 

 objection, however, does not hold good. While it is not 

 necessary to assume that intermediate elemental forms may 

 not exist to some extent, their amount would be insignificant. 

 The atoms of the periodic table on the basis of Thomson's 

 theory are aggregations of corpuscles representing collections 

 of maximum stability, and, hence, a transition collection 

 would hasten to these points, and we should neither find 

 them existing in notable quantity or be able to conserve 

 them any more than we can conserve the transition products 

 of atomic disintegration like thorium X or the emana- 

 tion X of radium. There is, therefore, no known impossi- 

 bility inherent in the conception of a conservative universe. 

 Have we any positive reason for believing in it? It must be 

 confessed, at the present time, not much. In Chapter III, 

 Part VI, we discovered that there is, apparently, a regenerat- 

 ing influence at work in the stars by which the cold complex 

 nebulae of meteorites become converted gradually into the 

 hottest stars of simple chemical constitution whence they 

 again fall into coldness and complexity ; and, very recently, 

 Sir William Ramsay announced that he believes himself to 

 have synthesized one element into another; but this is all, 

 and it does not suffice by any means to prove that the 

 universe of matter is building up its available energy as 

 fast as it dissipates it. 



Tie hypothesis of the reconstruction of the universe 

 of matter is therefore, at the present time, a pure specula- 



