BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1377 



everyday world of discourse also — are striving, and this more 

 and more anxiously, to understand the very nature, and the 

 bearings also, of the recent and current transformations of 

 what they have so long been accustomed to think the scien- 

 tific and rationally established theory of the physical Universe, 

 ranging up to and through the solar, stellar, and nebular systems, 

 of which our knowledge is ever being extended with increasing 

 telescopic powers, and also more and more deeply interpreted, 

 in turns by mathematical and spectroscopic advance. But behold, 

 our Newtonian Universe is shaken, and to its very foundations; 

 since in space, time, and movement alike. Space and Time, 

 we are now assured, can no longer be considered absolute. Not only 

 is our Euclidean geometry of three dimensions, as indeed was first 

 shown wellnigh a century ago, only one amid a choice of new geo- 

 metries without number ; but a new and seeming difficult conception 

 of "space- time" is pressed on us; in which our simple conception 

 of time is often spoken of as a "fourth dimension", into which we 

 feel called on to enter, and so dutifully strive to twist ourselves, 

 despite puzzlements and pains. Space and time, which are taken as 

 absolute in Newton's Principia, so long esteemed the most con- 

 vincing of all the achievements of science, are now presented as 

 "relative", in ways which alarm us as mathematically profound, 

 and beyond our past level of education. Yet thus has arisen a 

 reinterpretation, not only of gravitation and its outcomes, but this 

 through criticism of Newton's main conceptions of the whole astro- 

 nomic, spatial, and dynamic universe; which is now in one sense 

 limited and yet in another sense limitless ; so with rearrangement of 

 our associated concepts, and these experimentally verified in test- 

 cases; and thus victoriously compelling our acceptance. For associ- 

 ated with such transformations of our conception of the Universe 

 at its greatest, there has been going on a corresponding revolution 

 in its minutest and most intimate analysis. Thus consider how from 

 antiquity we have thought of this analysis as ending with "atoms"; 

 and next with these made clear for us by Dalton and the century 

 of chemists who have followed him, as so man}^ definite elements 

 with vast possibilities of combinations, but themselves ultimate. 

 These have long been so far arranged indeed, even into resemblant 

 groups, and in rhythmic and harmonious series; yet none the less 

 each retaining its own permanent and distinctive characters. But 

 now this apparent ending of our analysis of nature has proved to 

 be but a new beginning; for these "atoms" are now taken to pieces, 

 and proved to be so many microcosms, as from the single proton 

 and electron of the hydrogen atom to the vast complex of 238 of 

 each which we call uranium; while, stranger still, we find this to 

 be in process of a long and serial disintegration, and through phases 

 from slow to swift ; and these as a series of veritable transmutations, 



VOL. II TT 



