CHAPTER V 



ELECTRONS 



From earliest times a belief in the indestructibility 

 and indivisibility of the atom was a cardinal article 

 in the creed of the atomic school. The atoms of 

 Democritus were indestructible and indivisible. 

 Lucretius held that " the principles of matter, the 

 elements of the great whole, are solid and eternal : 

 no foreign action can change them. The atom is 

 the smallest body in nature .... it represents the 

 last term of the division." In more modern times 

 the same doctrine prevailed. Newton wrote : " It 

 seems probable to me that God in the beginning 

 formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable 

 particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such 

 other properties, and in such proportions to space, 

 as most conduced to the end for which he formed 

 them ; and that these primitive particles, being solids, 

 are incomparably harder than any porous bodies 

 compounded of them, even so very hard as never 

 to wear or to break in pieces, no ordinary power 



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