58 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



thick, animated by a sufficient velocity, would be 

 as impenetrable to shells as the steel plates of an 

 ironclad." On the same principle, a piece of tallow 

 candle can be shot through an inch plank, and a 

 rapidly revolving soft disc of iron will cut through 

 the hardest steel. On the same principle, too, if 

 soft leaf be laid on a piece of iron, if then gun- 

 cotton be placed upon the leaf and exploded, an 

 impress of the leaf will be left on the iron. 

 C Atoms and molecules have been weighed ; they 

 have been proved to dance, they have been per- 

 suaded to wed, and yet their shape is still unknown. 

 The atoms were pictured by Democritus as various 

 in shape, with hooks and handles ; they were 

 pictured by Descartes as tourbillons, and by Kelvin 

 as vortices in the ether ; but no eye has ever seen 

 atoms, and even theory cannot quite depict them.) 



