Ill 



A WONDERFUL WORLD 



SCIENCE recognizes a more fundamental world 

 than that of matter. This is the electro-mag- 

 netic world which underlies the material world and 

 which, as Professor Soddy says, probably com- 

 pletely embraces it, and has no mechanical analogy. 

 To those accustomed only to the grosser ideas of 

 matter and its motions, says the British scientist, 

 this electro-magnetic world is as difficult to conceive 

 of as it would be for us to walk upon air. Yet many 

 times in our lives is this world in overwhelming evi- 

 dence before us. During a thunderstorm we get an 

 inkling of how fearfully and wonderfully the uni- 

 verse in which we live is made, and what energy 

 and activity its apparent passivity and opacity 

 mark. A flash of lightning out of a storm-cloud 

 seems instantly to transform the whole passive 

 universe into a terrible living power. This slow, 

 opaque, indifferent matter about us and above us, 

 going its silent or noisy round of mechanical and 

 chemical change, ponderable, insensate, obstruc- 

 tive, slumbering in the rocks, quietly active in the 

 soil, gently rustling in the trees, sweetly purling in 



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