680 T. C. CHAMBERLIN 
indeed they are really materialistic at all—recede to minute points, 
and do little more than play the part of carriers of electric charges. 
The prodigious energies of the atoms seem to be stored in the 
extremely rapid revolutions of these charged integers and in the 
fields of force and the polarities which arise from them. The atom 
itself and all the combinations into which it enters are therefore 
to be regarded as theoretically compressible to an undefined degree. 
The old assigned limit vanishes, and no new one takes its place. 
For aught that is now known, even the nuclei, or protons, and the 
electrons may themselves be composite dynamical organizations and 
subject to compression. The fact that a nucleus has a mass 1,800 
times that of an electron suggests that perhaps analysis has yet 
one or more steps at least to take. Compression is therefore to be 
pictured as the struggle of one phase, or one set of phases, of 
energy against another phase, or set of phases, of energy, both 
sets being embodied in motion. 
While perhaps it cannot yet be said to be strictly proved that 
the positive and negative charges are in revolution about one 
another, there seems to be no other way in which the prodigious 
energies associated with them can be stored without giving such 
evidences of themselves as characterize the non-revolutionary 
activities, distinctions to be considered later. Moreover, the 
notable successes of the revolutional hypotheses in accounting for 
observed phenomena leave little room for doubt that they are 
substantially true, and may be taken as a fairly safe working-basis. 
In addition to the evidences of the atoms themselves, the 
analogies of the larger units of the cosmos lend support to the 
view that the atoms are revolutionary organizations. 
THE CONTRASTED MANIFESTATIONS OF ENERGY 
In the great stellar field, where the largeness of things makes 
visualization easier than in the hidden ultra-microscopic world 
within, energy manifests itself in two rather distinct kinds of 
activity. ‘The one is continuous motion in cyclic orbits or spiraloid 
revolutions running on indefinitely without loss of energy. It is, 
therefore, conservative and singularly undemonstrative. In the 
other, the motion is habitually interrupted by reversals and so is 
