NEW CONCEPTIONS IN SCIENCE 



are a great many such puzzles, some of them sug- 

 gested by the most familiar things. 



In the molecular world, science still gropes. It 

 is just like exploring a great cavern without even 

 a candle. We have reached down to the physical 

 units of the world as we know it; these are the 

 molecules, and we have learned how to count, 

 weigh, measure, and time them, and calculate, 

 after a fashion, their force and power. But this 

 is not the end. The molecules in turn seem made 

 up of smaller units, the atoms. What are these 

 made of? 



For a long time men of science some of them, 

 at least looked upon the atom with a little of the 

 old superstitious awe. It seemed to bear "the 

 stamp of the manufactured article," to quote a 

 famous phrase. 1 It was as if with the atom crea- 

 tion began ; and there were seventy-odd kinds. It 

 was a relic of man's waking dreams. 



The more philosophically minded took another 

 view. If the millions of different things in this 

 world are all compounded out of seventy -odd 

 elements, and are all reducible to these, probably 

 these seventy elements may themselves be re- 

 solved to a single primitive stuff urstoff, as the 

 Germans say. 



1 Sir John Herschel. 

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