CHEMICAL PARADOXES. 



conviction that each element was everlastingly 

 individual and unique ; that, whatever changes 

 might be effected by composition and decom- 

 position in the appearances and qualities of 

 the substances made out of the elements, no 

 one element could ever by any means be changed 

 into any other. 



Closely associated with this was the other 

 great doctrine of modern chemistry, that the 

 smallest portion of existing things is the atom ; 

 and since all existing things are made out of 

 the elements, the smallest portions of the 

 elements are atoms, the atoms themselves being 

 indivisible, unbreakable, and imperishable. 



It will be seen that this doctrine of the 

 unalterable nature of the atoms of which ele 

 ments consist necessarily involved the former 

 doctrine that no element could by any means be 

 changed into anything else. 



Both of these great doctrines have recently 

 had to be given up. 



The researches inspired by the remarkable 

 properties of radium have led to the conclusion 

 that the atoms of which elements are made up, 

 so far from being imperishable, are constantly in 

 certain proportions disintegrating into their still 

 smaller component parts, the corpuscles, and 

 that the phenomena which so strikingly differ- 

 entiate radium from other things depend upon 

 the fact that its atoms are disintegrating in 

 larger proportion. 



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