Conservation of Matter 33 



the identity of the electron lost, its substance 

 resolved into the original ether, without 

 parts or individual properties. If this 

 happened, within our ken, we should have 

 to confess that the properties of matter were 

 gone, and that hence everything that could 

 by any stretch of language be called 

 " matter " was destroyed, since no identi- 

 fying property remained. The discovery of 

 such an event may lie in the science of the 

 future ; it would be an epoch-making event 

 in the history of science, but no physicist 

 would be upset by it perhaps not even 

 surprised ; nor would any one have good 

 reason to be astonished if the correlative 

 phenomenon occurred, and under certain 

 conditions some knots or strains were some 

 day caused in the ether, which had not been 

 previously there ; and so " matter," or the 

 foundation of matter, artificially produced. 

 In other words, the destruction and the 

 creation of matter are well within the range 

 of scientific conception, and may be within 

 the realm of experimental possibility. 



3 



