62 MORRIS LOEB 



to show it here, break up this hydrochloric acid and this 

 ammonia into still smaller molecules, and beyond these still 

 are supposed to be the atoms. Every rearrangement of atoms 

 into molecules produces a new substance, and it is the marvel- 

 ous ability of the atoms to arrange themselves into hundreds 

 of thousands of ways that enables the organic chemist to 

 build up out of three or four elements the many compounds 

 which nature is building up for us daily and hourly in plants 

 and animals. 



Such then, is the idea entertained by the chemist of to-day 

 concerning the nature of the mechanism carrying out the 

 changes which it is his business to study. But we must re- 

 member that this idea is hypothetical it is no more than a 

 plausible guess. While the few master-minds of a century 

 can grasp such theories as pure abstractions, uninfluenced by 

 preconceived notions, the rest of us cannot free ourselves of 

 the prejudices derived from the familiar phenomena upon 

 which the theories are based. We are as little able to strip our 

 imagined infinitesimal particles of Matter and Energy from 

 the attributes of the grosser masses of our daily observation, 

 as was the Greek to impart other than human qualities to his 

 gods, whom he portrayed in human form. This is one of the 

 reasons for the many more or less fantastic attempts to over- 

 turn the atomic theory as it now exists. I do not believe that 

 the theory is perfect or ultimately correct, but a study of 

 most of the attacks upon it leads to the conclusion that the 

 attack is made, not upon the pure theory, but upon that par- 

 ticular image which has been set up to represent the theory 

 in an iconoclast's intellectual neighborhood. Thus we some- 

 times find persons who imagine they are attacking the atomic 

 theory, when they contend only against the gratuitous idea 

 that 'atoms are hard, round pellets, rather than vortices of 

 an infinitely elastic fluid or the like. But we have no time 



