1378 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



strangely recalling what have so long seemed the dreams of alche- 

 mists. Among such elements, both new and old, the amazing 

 radium is but the most accessible for varied experimental studies, 

 and these in man\^ directions; as from cosmic reinterpretations by 

 terms astronomic and geologic, physical and chemical; and even to 

 specific applications to diseases hitherto unconquered. Front's 

 hypothesis of a fundamental unity among all kinds of matter is 

 thus strikingly confirmed; yet that permanence which seemed so 

 clearly demonstrated by Lavoisier with his balance, and verified 

 even to atomic weights, by subtler weighings, is thus deeply shaken. 

 We have next to face no less serious changes in our conceptions of 

 energy. The particulate light emission doctrine of Newton seemed 

 definitel}' superseded by Huyghens' theory of radiation as ether- 

 waves; while the incorporeal nature of heat was made even more 

 plain and clear. The speculative insight of Faraday as to the nature 

 of electromagnetism was not only mathematical^ confirmed by 

 Clerk Maxwell, but correlated with the interpretation of light. 

 Including and correlating all forms of energy, the sublime doctrine 

 of its conservation was gradually elaborated by many of our ablest 

 scientific brains, all the way from Mayer to Kelvin and his peers in 

 the same and kindred fields, and with corresponding fertility of 

 applications. Yet despite the many and brilliant advances in the 

 study of electricity, as from Gilbert, through Volta and Galvani 

 and many more, to Kelvin and his successors, the essential nature 

 of electricity remained unexplained; whereas now, to make its long 

 story short, our contemporary ph3^sicists have not only come to 

 treat it as particulate, but applied this conception to the reinter- 

 pretation of the atom itself, since with the central protons as its 

 "positive" and central sub-atomic unit, and the surrounding 

 electrons as "negative". The long and varied endeavours towards 

 forming a consistent conception of the nature of ether, so ably 

 postulated and applied to meet the needs of the undulatory theory, 

 have yet also failed in other respects to attain consistenc}^ among 

 its assumed properties, or experimental verification of seeming 

 essential ones: hence, despite the partially explanatory value of 

 each endeavour, most physicists are now depriving us of its aid; 

 so that we (and they themselves) cannot image physical processes 

 as clearly without it - yet also not adequately with it either! Hence 

 we fail to attain the clearly visualisable imageries of mechanical 

 working on which Kelvin especially insisted as of the very essence 

 of clear physical thought; so we are now often offered but mathe- 

 matical expressions, and these beyond our ordinary powers; and 

 which even their potent formulators confess they cannot fully 

 translate into the physical imageries our concrete minds desire. 

 Yet to take an example which we can faintly attempt to image, 

 we are assured that the apparently clear (and doubtless so far con- 



