Atoms. 199 



in view of this property of admitting certain 

 definite possibilities, while yet they are so 

 limited as to fence off and exclude all competing 

 possibilities, that Sir John Herschel felt himself 

 compelled to describe the atoms as possessing 

 " all the characteristics of manufactured articles" 



This verdict amuses Dr. Tyndall ; nothing 

 more. "He twice 1 dismisses it with a super- 

 cilious laugh ; for which perhaps, as for the 

 atoms it concerns, there may be some suppressed 

 * ratio sufficiens! But the problem thus plea- 

 santly touched is not one of those which solventur 

 risu ; and, till some better grounded answer can 

 be given to it, that on which the large and 

 balanced thought of Herschel and the masterly 

 penetration of Clerk Maxwell have alike settled 

 with content, may claim at least a provisional 

 respect." 2 



To conclude. The conception of an infinitude 

 of discrete atoms, when pushed to its hypo- 

 thetical extreme, brings them no nearer to unity 

 than homogeneity, an attribute which itself 

 implies that they are separate and comparable 

 members of a genus. And what is the result of 

 comparing them ? 



1 Belfast Address, p. 26 ; and Fortnightly Review, 

 Nov., 1875, p. 598. 



2 Martineau : Contemporary Review, vol. xxvii. p. 345. 



