THE JOURNEYING ATOMS 



Journeying atoms, 

 Primordial wholes? 



In those ever-moving and indivisible atoms he 

 touches the very corner-stone of the modern scienti- 

 fic conception of matter. It is hardly an exaggera- 

 tion to say that in this conception we are brought 

 into contact with a kind of transcendental physics. 

 A new world for the imagination is open — a world 

 where the laws and necessities of ponderable bodies 

 do not apply. The world of gross matter disappears, 

 and in its place we see matter dematerialized, and 

 escaping from the bondage of the world of tangible 

 bodies; we see a world where friction is abolished, 

 where perpetual motion is no longer impossible; 

 where two bodies may occupy the same space at the 

 same time; where collisions and disruptions take 

 place without loss of energy; where subtraction 

 often means more — as when the poison of a sub- 

 stance is rendered more virulent by the removal of 

 one or more atoms of one of the elements; and where 

 addition often means less — as when three parts 

 of the gases of oxygen and hydrogen unite and form 

 only two parts of watery vapor; where mass and 

 form, centre and circumference, size and structure, 

 exist without any of the qualities ordinarily asso- 

 ciated with these things through our experience in a 

 three-dimension world. We see, or contemplate, 

 bodies which are indivisible; if we divide them, 

 their nature changes; if we divide a molecule of 



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