MACHINERY AND MANUFACTURE 185 



Next let the assistant we have supposed have his attention 

 aroused in this way to consider What is matter? Again the 

 door is opened to a myriad of most essential questioning. 

 Admittedly iron is an element one of the seventy-eight at 

 present acknowledged to exist but an element is not now 

 recognized as the end of the alley past which one could no further 

 proceed. Rather it is just the turning which opens up a new 

 and apparently endless vista where one has divided down an 

 element to the smallest possible particle that is called an atom. 

 What is an atom? It is not a simple powdered particle to be 

 viewed with a microscope. It is again a structure. The most 

 complicated steam engine is a very simple structure compared 

 with an atom. 



The atom is not the ultimate. Sir Oliver Lodge has stated 

 that if an atom could be magnified to the size of a fairly large 

 building, such as a church, for example, the corpuscles of which 

 it is composed would be represented by, say, some one thousand 

 grains of sand. If the atom is heated these corpuscles would 

 dash about at a speed of many thousands of miles a second. 

 They repel each other, attract each other, and fly furiously 

 around within the orbit of the atom. 



What fills the space between the corpuscles for there can 

 be no vacuums in Nature? What exists beyond the corpuscles 

 mystery beyond microscopes? Men of science nowadays 

 begin to whisper, Mind is must be behind. 



Thus an intelligent assistant can inspire his daily task. He 

 can he ought to perceive that he is in a fairy kingdom where 

 all that appears most real is most illusory. 



Speaking of knowledge of this description, the Hon. A. J. 

 Balfour, in his presidential address before the British Associa- 

 tion, said: " It excites feelings of the most acute intellectual 

 gratification. The satisfaction it gives is almost aesthetic in its 

 intensity and quality. We feel the same sort of pleasurable 

 shock as when, from the crest of some melancholy pass, we 

 first see far below us the sudden glory of plain, river and of 

 mountain." 



To have one's intelligence aroused is no little thing in itself . 

 An awakened interest in science is often the salvation of a 

 lonely man on a plantation, establishing and preserving a sound 

 mind in a sound body and ever making for a greater all-round 



