A WONDERFUL WORLD 



as if they were solid bodies with weight and form, 

 with centre and circumference, colliding with one 

 another like billiard-balls, or like cosmic bodies in 

 the depths of space, striking one another squarely, 

 and, for aught I know, each going through another, 

 or else grazing one another and glancing off. To par- 

 ticles of matter so small that they can no longer be 

 divided or made smaller, the impossible feat of each 

 going through the centre of another, or of each 

 enveloping the other, might be affirmed of them 

 without adding to their unthinkableness. The the- 

 ory is that if we divide a molecule of water the parts 

 are no longer water, but atoms of hydrogen and 

 oxygen — real bodies with weight and form, and 

 storehouses of energy, but no longer divisible. 



Indeed, the atomic theory of matter leads us into 

 a non-material world, or a world the inverse of the 

 solid, three-dimensioned world that our senses re- 

 veal to us, or to matter in a fourth estate. We know 

 solids and fluids and gases; but emanations which 

 are neither we know only as we know spirits and 

 ghosts — by dreams or hearsay. Yet this fourth or 

 ethereal estate of matter seems to be the final, real, 

 and fundamental condition. 



How it differs from spirit is not easy to define. The 

 beta ray of radium will penetrate solid iron a foot 

 thick, a feat that would give a spirit pause. The 

 ether of space, which science is coming more and 

 more to look upon as the mother-stuff of all things, 



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