72 DIVISIBILITY OF MATTER ATOMIC THEORY. 



assumption may be applied to atoms. Or, if we go 

 further and consider, with Wollaston and Mitscherlich, 

 all the forms of crystallisation as explicable by the 

 opposition of simple spheres or spheroids with an inter- 

 vening elastic or compressible medium, whatever its 

 nature, we come more closely to the elements of an 

 atomic theory, and to a view more plausible perhaps 

 than any yet propounded, of this part of the nature of 

 primitive atoms. 



With every aid, however, of analogy and hypo- 

 thesis, we cannot yet go further in the solution of a 

 problem complicated by the different kinds of matter 

 itself. Eecurring, however, to the more general view 

 of the properties of atoms, some things still remain to 

 be noticed. In admitting their fixedness of figure we 

 necessarily deprive them of individual elasticity. This 

 property in its various degrees can only depend on the 

 manner in which atoms are amalgamated or grouped 

 together in mass a condition which may be said to 

 determine generally their relation to impulses from 

 without, and their mobility as one of the most impor- 

 tant of these. It is not too much to conceive this 

 property' the capacity and velocity of motion as 

 being very different for atoms of different kinds, or for 

 atoms of the same kind differently aggregated. Eecent 

 researches on gases and vapours afford fair sanction 

 to hypothesis on this subject. The gaseous form of 

 matter is that which indeed aids more especially in the 

 enquiry, giving their most active and mobile condition 

 to its atomic parts, through the interpenetration of 

 those forces by which this wonderful machinery of 



