232 MODERN VIEWS ON MATTER. 



now as when tir.st j^enenited — that the primary motions wdiich consti- 

 tnto the (wistence of the atom mi^ht slowly be ehanjiing, and eyen the 

 secondaiT motions which pi-odnee all the eti'ects we can ol)serye — heat, 

 chemic, electric, etc. — mi<>ht in a slight degree l)e affected; and I 

 showed the pi'obability that the atoms of the chemical elements were 

 not eternal in existence, but shared with the rest of Creation the attri- 

 butes of decay and death. 



The same idea was expanded at a lecture I deliyered at the Royal 

 Institution in 1887, when it was suggested that the atomic weights 

 were not inyariable ((uantities. 



1 might ([note Mr. Herbert Spencer, Sir Benjamin Brodie, Professor 

 Graham, Sir George Stokes, Sir William Thomson (now Lord Kelvin), 

 Sir jSoi'man Lockyer, Doctor Gladstone, and many other English men 

 of science to show that the notion, not necessaril\' of the decompos- 

 a])ility, ))ut at any rate of the complexity of our supposed elements, 

 has long l)een "in the air" of science waiting to take more definite 

 deyelopment. Our minds are gradually getting accustomed to the idea 

 of the genesis of the elements, and many of us are straining for the 

 tirst glimpse of the resolution of the chemical atom. We are eager to 

 enter the portal of the mysterious region too readily ticketed "Unknown 

 and Unknowable." 



Another phase of the dream now demsinds attention. I come to the 

 earlier glimpses of the electric theory of matter. 



Passing over the yaguer specidations of Faraday and the more 

 positive speculations of Sir William Thomson (now Lord Kelvin), one 

 of the earliest definite statements of this theory is given in an article 

 in the Fortnightly Reyiew for June, 1875, by W. K. Clifford, a man 

 who in common with other pioneers shared that "noblest misfortune 

 of being born before his time.'" "There is great reason to ))elieye," 

 said Clifford, "that every material atom carries upon it a small electric 

 current, if it does not wholly consist of this current." 



In 1886, when president of the chemical section of the British asso- 

 ciation, in a speculation on the origin of matter, I drew a picture of 

 the gradual formation of the chemical elements by the workings of 

 three forms of energy — electricity, chemism, and temperature — on the 

 "formless mist" (protyle"), ydierein all matter was in the preatomic 

 state — potential rather than actual. In this scheme the chemical 

 elements owe their stability to their being the outcome of a struggle 

 for existence — a Darwinian deyelopment by chemical evolution — a 

 surviyal of the most stable. Those of lowest atomic weight would 

 first be formed, then those of intermediate weight, and finally the 



« ^ye reiiuife u word, analogous to protoplasm, to express the idea of the orighial 

 primal matter existing ])efore the evolution of the chemical elements. The word 1 

 venture to use is composed of nfjo (earlier than) and rA;/ (the stuff of which things 

 are made). 



