26 



NA TURE 



[May 9, 1907 



uliioh have led to the establishment on a firm basis of 

 the atomic theory of electricity. It is only the last 

 third wliich is devoted to the speculative and con- 

 troversial side in which the electron becomes also a 

 material conception replacintj the " iirstoff " or " pro- 

 tvle " of earlier similar speculations. Some of the 

 points touched upon in the text are treated at greater 

 length in a series of appendices, but no index has 

 been furnished, which is a decided omission. 



Of the chapters presenting special features of 

 interest may be mentioned chapter ix., which is 

 largelv concerned with the size of the electron and 

 its power of penetrating matter, the effects of a 

 collision between electron and atom, and the ratio 

 of the distribution of the energy of collision between 

 heat and X-rays; chapter xi., which deals with the 

 magnetism of light, and affords a very clear exposi- 

 tion of the nature of the action, which " has opened 

 up a new branch of physics, a new department, as it 

 were, of atomic astronomy, with atoms and electrons 

 instead of planets and satellites"; and chapter xiv., 

 which contains a full treatment of the experimental 

 work of Kaufmann on the high-velocity i8-ray 

 electrons expelled by radium. In chapter xv. no less 

 than five alternative views of the constitution of the 

 atom are considered, which emphasises, to use the 

 author's own expression, the " painfully indefinite 

 character " of the theory applied to matter. Excep- 

 tion must be taken to chapter xviii., entitled " Sum- 

 mary of other Consequences of the Electron Theory," 

 which begins with a section headed " Radio- 

 activity " ( I). Now this is surely unfair to a great 

 and independent experimental subject, because not 

 only has radio-activity taught us something reallv de- 

 finite and fundamental about matter as distinguished 

 from electricity, but also it has at the same time fur- 

 nished, for example, in the penetrating power of the 

 a and /3 rays, the most damaging evidence against 

 the possibility of an electronic constitution of matter. 



Sir Oliver Lodge's well-known forceful and attrac- 

 tive style is always in its element in dealing with 

 the conquests achieved in physical science, but the 

 concluding passage is something of the nature of a 

 parting shot at the reader. 



" Especially must the inner ethereal meaning both 

 of positive and negative charges be explained : 

 whether on the notion of a right-and-left-handed 

 self-locked intrinsic wrench-strain in a Kelvin gyro- 

 statically-stable ether, elaborated by Larmor, or' on 

 some hitherto unimagined plan. And this will entail 

 a quantity of exploring mathematical work of the 

 highest order." 



To explore the inner ethereal meaning of this 

 right-and-left-hander elaborated by the author de- 

 mands a brain of unquestionable gyrostatic stability. 



Having dealt with the author's book as the ex- 

 position of his views of the nature of electricity and 

 matter, and having first fully acknowledged the debt 

 the reading public owe to Sir Oliver Lodge for the 

 leading part he has taken in the public work of 

 advancing and e.xpounding the new doctrines, it may 

 not be considered ungracious to touch a little less 

 ■enthusiastically than the author does on certain as- 

 NO. 1958, VOL. 76] 



pects of the new theories themselves here so power- 

 fully advocated. 



Without in the least wishing to minimise the im- 

 portance of the part played by imagination and hypo- 

 thesis in experimental science, the question mav 

 fairly be asked whether these persistent efforts to 

 " simplify " matter and reduce it to a single funda- 

 mental existence have a place in the legitimate 

 scientific thought of the present day, or whether they 

 are not a continually recurring phase of an apparently 

 innate primitive mental aspiration, the origin of 

 which is to be sought, not in the phenomena them- 

 .selves, but in the predilections of the human brain. 

 The rule that where one conception suffices it is super- 

 fluous to use more than one may be fully granted. 

 But it is surely still something of a mental luxury 

 to believe that these ideas of the essential unity of 

 matter and its ultimate reducibility to a single type, 

 which exist deep down in the most ancient mytho- 

 logies, and may be said to form part of the 

 common stock of original ways of thinking, have as 

 yet any other than this foundation. Matter continues 

 to be experimentally incomprehensible, and as recent 

 work in radio-activity has shown, the possibilities of 

 its complexity are far from exhausted by the eighty 

 or more recognised element's. The attempts, for 

 example Prout's hypothesis, to reduce matter to one 

 common basis testify rather to the aspiration for 

 that kind of explanation which to our ideas seems ap- 

 propriate. It is undoubtedly satisfying to picture all 

 matter as built up of some one unit, because an in- 

 grained bias exists in the mind towards the simplest 

 possible origin of phenomena. There is, however, 

 evidence that our natural subjective impressions of 

 what is fit and appropriate are, when they are traced 

 to their source, derived in the first place from an in- 

 sufficient study of the operations of Nature, which 

 fuller knowledge usually dispels. It is, of course, 

 possible that with the even fuller knowledge of the 

 future some such doctrine as a connection between 

 what is mentally harmonious and what is phj'sically 

 true may transpire, and the doctrine find a legitimate 

 place in the theories of pure physics. But for the 

 present the supporters of the electronic theory of 

 matter have to show that they have not allowed their 

 enthusiasm to betray them into an attitude of mind 

 which belongs rather to the past than to the future 

 of scientific thought. Frederick Soddy. 



THE COLONISATION OF VIRGINIA. 

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 and Co., Ltd., 1907.) Price 25s. net. 



AT the time of writing (April) the warships of the 

 Powers are gathered together in Hampton 

 Roads to honour the tercentenary of the founding of 

 the Commonwealth of \"irginia, and the Jamestown 

 Exposition (held at Norfolk) will soon be opened for 



