MODERN VIEWS ON MATTER: THE REALIZATION OF A 



DREAM." 



By Sir "William Ckookes, F. Tl. S., etc. 



For nearly a century men who devote themselves to science have 

 been dreaniino- of atoms, molecules, ultramundane particles, and specu- 

 lating as to the origin of matter; and now to-da}- they have got so far 

 as to admit the possibility of resolving the chemical elements into 

 simpler forms of matter, or even of refining them altogether awa}" into 

 ethereal vibrations of electrical energy. 



This dream has been essentiall}' a British dream, and we have become 

 speculative and imaginative to an audacious extent, almost belying our 

 character of a purely practical nation. The notion of impenetrable 

 mysteries has been dismissed. A nn^stery is a thing to be solved — 

 "and man alone can master the impossible." There has been a vivid 

 new start. Our physicists have remodeled their views as to the con- 

 stitution of matter and as to the complexity if not the actual decom- 

 posability of the chemical elements. To show how far we have been 

 propelled on the strange new road, how dazzling are the wonders that 

 waylay the researcher, we have but to recall — matter in a fourth state, 

 the genesis of the elements, the dissociation of the chemical elements, 

 the existence of bodies smaller than atoms, the atomic nature of elec- 

 tricit}', the perception of electrons, not to mention other dawning 

 marvels far removed from the lines of thought usually associated with 

 English chemistry. 



The earliest definite suggestion in the last century of the possible 

 compound nature of the elements occurs in a lecture delivered in 1809'^ 

 by Sii- Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution. In that memorable 

 lecture he speculated on the existence of some substance common to 

 all the metals, and he averred that "If such generalizations should be 

 supported by facts, a new, a simple, and a grand philosophy would 

 be the result. From the combination of diflerent quantities of two or 



aAn address delivered before the Congress of Applied Chemistry at Berlin, June 5, 

 1903. Reprinted from author's pamphlet copy, London, 1903. 

 & Works of Sir Humphry Davy, Vol. VIII, p. 325. 



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