TENDENCIES OF MODERN PHYSICS 49 



exact and more comprehensive, will do more than the 

 criticisms of its adversaries to hasten the time when 

 physicists will frankly avoid metaphysical explana- 

 tions and start from experimental axioms. 



In order to be exact when defining this new idea of 

 the atom, I shall quote again from lEther and Matter: 

 " The protion (or sub-atom) must therefore be in whole 

 or in part a nucleus of intrinsic strain in the ether, a 

 place at which the continuity of the medium has been 

 broken and cemented together again (to use a crude 

 but effective image) without accurately fitting the 

 parts, so that there is a residual strain all round the 

 place." So far this might almost be interpreted as 

 the specification for a vortex atom; but, since such a 

 type of strain fails to provide matter with electric 

 charges, he diverges at this point and considers the 

 " ultimate element of matter to be an electric charge 

 or nucleus of permanent ethereal strain instead of a 

 vortex ring." 



When discussing these definitions, we should bear 

 constantly in mind that the chief, if not the only, pur- 

 pose of an atomic theory or of a mechanical model is 

 to create a picture, however crude, of the constitution 

 of matter. I can form absolutely no mental image of 

 such a kind of matter as Professor Larmor proposes, 

 and although I have discussed this new theory many 

 times with its supporters, I have never found them able 

 to give any clear and simple idea of such a strain; it 



