124 PHYSICS OF THE ELECTRON 



transmits. The connection sought for is furnished us by the electron 

 or corpuscle, an electrical centre movable with respect to the ether, 

 and carrying with it its divergent electric field. 



This was the fundamental idea which caused Lorentz to conceive 

 of the possibility of a relative displacement of electrified centres of 

 divergence of the electric field, and of the ether considered as im- 

 movable. This displacement takes place without any change in the 

 amount of the charge, that is to say, that the surface which is dis- 

 placed in the ether with the electron is crossed by an electric flux 

 which is completely invariable. It is the fundamental principle 

 of the conservation of electricity, which will perhaps absorb the 

 principle of the conservation of matter, as we cannot have matter 

 without electricity. It is, however, probable that electricity alone 

 is not sufficient to constitute matter. 



We have actually no very precise information of the relative dis- 

 placement of charges and of the ether, of electrified centres in an 

 immovable medium, no tangible form under which we can conceive 

 it. The attempts which have thus far been made to obtain a concrete 

 representation, in order to give a material structure to the ether, have 

 all been sterile of results. Perhaps there is a difficulty which belongs 

 to the actual constitution of our minds, habituated by our secular 

 evolution to think through matter, unable to form a concrete repre- 

 sentation which is not material; also it seems scarcely reasonable to 

 seek to construct a simple medium such as the ether by consider- 

 ing it to spring from a complex and various medium like matter. 

 I believe it will be necessary to think ether, to conceive of it inde- 

 pendently of all material representations, by means of those electro- 

 magnetic properties which put us in contact with it. I will return 

 to this point later in reference to the mechanical theories of the ether. 



If the electric charge is assumed to have a volume distribution 

 in a portion of the medium, the principle of the conservation of elec- 

 tricity, and also the possibility of relative displacement of electricity 

 and ether, makes it necessary for us, in this portion of space, to 

 modify the equations of Hertz relative to the displacement current 

 by the addition of a convection current, a necessary consequence of 

 the existence of a displacement current connected with a motion 

 of charges, and implying the production of a magnetic field by the 

 motion of electrified bodies across the medium. This consequence of 

 Hertz's equations has now received complete experimental con- 

 firmation. 



Moreover, the experimental facts impose on these movable 

 charges a discontinuous, granular structure, and lead to the idea 

 of the electron as a singular region of the ether, carrying a charge 

 equal to that of the hydrogen atom in electrolysis, but of different 

 sign, and distributed on the surface or in the volume of the electron 



