SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT 17 



the terrific, the inconceivable rate which I have 

 mentioned. Yet over these incredible distances 

 science exercises her reign, weighing, measuring, 

 analyzing the composition of the heavenly bodies, 

 estimating their orbits, and foretelling with un- 

 erring accuracy their movements in the future. 



Or look again at the smallest things we know of. 

 The living cell is a very small and, it used to be 

 thought, a very simple thing. Yet the more we 

 know of it the less simple we find it. The writer 

 who said that every cell was full of machinery as 

 complicated and as great as that which is contained 

 in a " Great Eastern," in no way exaggerated the 

 state of affairs. He was not thinking of the further 

 complications which have to be considered when 

 we get to much smaller things than the cell, 

 smaller even than the molecules of the chemical 

 substances which build up the cell, when in fact 

 we arrive at what, but a few years ago, was thought 

 to be the ultimate limit of indivisibility, the atom. 

 For the atom is now said to be made up of elec- 

 trons, or units of electricity, positive and negative 

 electrons. On this hypothesis the oppositely 

 charged electrons are to be thought of " as flying 

 about inside the atom, as a few thousand specks 

 like full stops might fly about inside a room ; 

 forming a kind of cosmic system under their strong 

 mutual forces, and occupying the otherwise empty 

 region of space which we call the atom occupy- 

 ing it in the same sense that a few scattered but 

 armed soldiers can occupy a territory occupying 

 it by forceful activity not by bodily bulk."* 



* Lodge, Modern Views of Matter, p. n. 



