6o SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



being able to divide what God himself made in 

 the first creation." Sir John Herschell was of the 

 same opinion, and stated that the atoms bore " the 

 stamp of the manufactured article/' Dalton held 

 that "we might as well attempt to introduce a 

 new element into the solar system as to create or 

 destroy a particle of hydrogen." More emphatic 

 still, Clerk- Maxwell, in a lecture at Bradford in 

 1873, declared: "Natural causes, as we know, 

 are at work which tend to modify, if they do not 

 at length destroy, all the arrangements and dimen- 

 sions of the earth and the whole solar system. 

 But though in the course of ages catastrophes have 

 occurred and may yet occur in the heavens, though 

 ancient systems may be dissolved, and new systems 

 evolved out of their ruins, the molecules out of 

 which these systems are built — the foundation- 

 stones of the material universe — remain unbroken 

 and unworn." 



That was the creed of the atomists, and it grew 

 stronger as chemical knowledge increased. 



No wonder the belief in the " indivisible suprem- 

 acy " of the atoms was so firmly held. Chemists 

 crushed substances, dissolved them in acids, changed 

 them from gas to liquid, from liquid to solid, forced 

 them into unnatural combinations, tore them 

 asunder from each other with explosive violence, 

 and still the atoms remained intact and un- 



