68 MORRIS LOEB 



simply extend the limits of the divisibility of matter. The 

 electron is not to be considered as a small speck of matter at 

 all, but as a permanent manifestation of energy concentrated 

 on a minute portion of the luminif erous ether. The view and 

 the explanation of many phenomena on such a basis has been 

 acclaimed as the triumph of energetics, the final elimination 

 of the conception of matter. An unbiased reading of J. J. 

 Thomson's Yale lectures, however, will impress anybody 

 that he decidedly materializes both energy and ether. Per- 

 haps much of this materialization is purely symbolic, to bring 

 his mathematical reasoning within the comprehension of his 

 audience; but to me it seems that an electric charge which 

 has quantity, mass, inertia, elasticity, and expansibility, which 

 obeys the laws of hydrostatics, and virtually has a surface 

 beyond which it can only produce effects by the medium of 

 mysterious lines of force, has a marvelous resemblance to the 

 picture which the ordinary chemist's mind would form of 

 material substance. His ether is not only that puzzling para- 

 dox, at once impalpable and inconceivably dense, rigid and 

 frictionless, which we have accepted as the whole means of 

 explaining the transmission of motion through a vacuum; 

 to extend its importance as the substratum of all phenomena 

 it must become heterogeneous and capable of deformation; 

 to form a neutral atom, some of it must become a spherical 

 jelly in which other parts of itself are imbedded as rigid par- 

 ticles. It has, consequently, different degrees of hardness, 

 and is subject to internal attractions. Thomson even volun- 

 teers the admission that, for the explanation of certain 

 phenomena, his ether must have structure, or, at least, be 

 stratified. 



This can, of course, be no insinuation against the work of 

 some of the greatest living physicists and mathematicians: 

 accepting their premises, I do not doubt that they have 



