Conservation of Matter 29 



Supposing an atom thus broken up into 

 electrons, its weight may possibly have 

 disappeared. We simply do not know 

 whether weight is a property of the group- 

 ing called an atom, or whether it belongs 

 also to the individual ingredients or cor- 

 puscles of that atom. There is at present 

 no evidence. But whether weight has dis- 

 appeared or not, it is quite certain, for 

 definite though rather recondite theoretical 

 reasons, that the inertia would not have 

 disappeared ; and accordingly it may be 

 held, and must be held in our present state 

 of knowledge, that the constancy of funda- 

 mental material still holds good, even though 

 the atoms are resolved into electric charges 

 an amount of destruction never con- 

 templated by those chemists and physicists 

 who promulgated the doctrine of the con- 

 servation of matter. 



Electrical Theory of Matter. 



But then, on the electrical theory of 

 matter, even inertia is not the thoroughly 



