ELECTRONS AND ATOMS 37 



disappear, and in disruption (as in radio- 

 activity or in electron formation) energia may 

 reappear. As the result of this the real con- 

 servation law becomes the constancy of energia 

 plus potentia. 



But if there is movement something must 

 be moving, a simple fact which appears to 

 have been forgotten by some philosophers 

 who have attempted to get rid of matter 

 altogether by stating that it is only vortex 

 motion. Something must move in the vortices 

 or, in other words, there must be some 

 precursor of matter which is converted into 

 matter when it becomes inhabited by energy. 



Such a precursor may well be the ether, or 

 aether, which has had to be postulated to 

 account for the transmissions of energy which 

 occur through vacua, such as a vacuum bulb 

 carrying electric radiations and radio-active 

 discharges and radiant heat and light, or, the 

 interstellar spaces such as that between the 

 sun and earth which carries the enormous 

 flood of energy as light and heat to -supply 

 nearly all our sources of terrestrial energy. 



If it be supposed that this ether is lacking 

 entirely in the properties of mass, it is difficult 

 to see in what terms a given quantity of 

 energy in transit through it can be expressed, 

 and a conception is created of energy entirely 



