loo SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



that wherever there is an atom there is a small 

 electric current. Very many of the properties 

 of atoms are explained by means of this current : 

 we have vague hopes that all the rest will be 

 likewise explained." Ten years later Karl Pearson 

 went a step further. " I have no objection," he 

 asserted, " to calling the moving things matter ; 

 but we must bear in mind that the moving 

 things may be the last things in the world 

 which accord with the popular conception of 

 matter ; they may even be its negation. What 

 if the ultimate atom upon which we build up the 

 substantial realities of the external world be an 

 absolute vacuum ? Or what if matter be only 

 non-matter in motion ? I do not say that the 

 moving thing is of this kind, because nobody as 

 yet knows what it really is, but let us endeavour 

 to imagine something of the kind." 



In 1890 Preston wrote: "The present tend- 

 ency of physical science is to regard all the 

 phenomena of Nature, and even matter itself, 

 as manifestations of energy stored in the ether." 

 Nay, as far back as 1708, Newton had hinted that 

 matter was ethereal in nature. "Perhaps," he 

 suggested, " the whole frame of nature may be 

 nothing but various contextures of some certain 

 ethereal spirits and vapours condensed, as it were, 

 by precipitation, and, after condensation, wrought 



