32 Life and Matter [chap.il 



least the basis of matter was fundamentally 

 conserved. 



Further than this, however, we cannot 

 go ; and to say, as Professor Haeckel says, 

 that the modern physicist has grown so 

 accustomed to the conservation of matter 

 that he is unable to conceive the contrary, 

 is simply untrue. Whatever may be the 

 case in real fact, there is no question with 

 respect to the possibility of conception. 

 The electrons themselves must be explained 

 somehow ; and the only surmise which at 

 present holds the field is that they are knots 

 or twists or vortices, or some sort of either 

 static or kinetic modification, of the ether 

 of space a small bit partitioned off from 

 the rest and individualised by reason of this 

 identifying peculiarity. It may be that 

 these knots cannot be untied, these twists 

 undone, these vortices broken up ; it may 

 be that neither artificially nor spontaneously 

 are they ever in the slightest degree changed. 

 It may be so, but we do not know ; and it 

 is quite easy to conceive them broken up, 



