MODERN VIEWS OIN MATTER. 221 



Oil this view all tiic (^Iciiicnts would l)e regarded us dili'ereiit group- 

 ings of one fundamental constituent. Of all the groupings possi])le. 

 doubtless most are so unstalile as never to be formed; but some are 

 stable, or at least relatively stable, and these stabler groupings consti- 

 tute the chemical elements that we know. The fundamental ingredient 

 of Avhich, on this view, the whole of matter is made up, is nothing 

 more or less than electricity, in the form of an aggregate of an ecjual 

 numlter of positive and negative electric charges. 



This, when established, will be a unitication of matter such as has 

 through all the ages been sought: it goes further than had l)eeii hoped, 

 for the su])stratum is not an unknown and hypothetical protyle. but 

 the familiar electric charge. Nevertheless, of course, it is no ultimate 

 explanation. The questions remain. What, then, is an electric charge? 

 What is the internal structure and constitution of an electron? 

 AVherein lies the dili'erence lietween positive and negative electricity? 

 and What is their- relation to the ether of space? Definite questions 

 these, and dou))tless some day answerable; indeed, powerful methods 

 of attack on this position have been already contrived ])y Dr. J. Lar- 

 mor and others; ))ut they are questions of a higher order of difHculty 

 than those which occupy us to-day, and it must remain for a future 

 llomanes lecturer to report progress in these directions, whenever 

 adequate progress has, in fact, been made. 



8. That is the end of the first half of my lecture; and six months 

 ago that, somewhat expanded, might have been the whole of it, because 

 the next portion would have seemed too fanciful; but discoveries have 

 been made, chiefly in France and in Canada — some of the most strik- 

 ing of them within the present 3^ear — which remove the treatment of 

 the next part of m}' subject from the realm of fancT to the region of 

 proliability, and justify my proceeding further with some of the theo- 

 retical consequences deducible from an electric theory of matter. 



I referred above briefly to the origin of radiation, saying that by 

 the method of applying a powerful magnet to a source of light, and 

 examining the minute perturbations in the lines of the spectrum thus 

 produced, it had been proved that the real source of radiation was an 

 electric charge in rapid orbital motion; and 1 now" go on to say that 

 by careful measurement of the amount of perturbation it has hccii 

 definitely proved that it is our friends the negative electrons, with a 

 mass about one thousandth of the smallest known atom of matter, that 

 are responsible for the excitation of ether waves or the production of 

 light. Larmor and others have, indeed, shown mathematically that 

 whenever an electric charge is subject to acceleration, an emission of 

 some amount of radiation is inevitable, by reason of the interaction of 

 its electric and magnetic fields; and it is proliable that there is no 

 other source of light or radiation possible exce})t this change in the 



