CHAPTER IV. 

 The Constitution of Matter. 



Section i. T lie Material Elements : 



The task of reducing matter to its ultimate con- 

 stituents or tabling the scientists' material alphabet is 

 an exercise of old standing, incomplete even now. 

 Thales reduced the elements to zvater ; Empedocles 

 to fire, air, earth and water ; Leucippus, Democritus, 

 Epicurus and Lucretius to atoms. But it is only from 

 the beginning of the seventeenth century that the 

 chemical elements as we now know them began to be 

 tabulated. 



Although the elements are thus indestructible 

 ultimates, the next things to nothing, and beyond 

 which it is impossible for us as something to think, 

 scientists even now fail to comprehend what these 

 ultimate elements mean. Thus Lord Salisbury, in his 

 Presidential Address to the British Association at 

 Oxford (1894), described the elements as a " mystery 

 or enigma," because we did not know their " origin." 

 This announcement from the virtual head-quarters of 



