162 HAS SCIENCE DISCOVERED GOD? 



activity. For it is characteristic of sound science that 

 the new does not usually disown the old, but rather 

 develops out of it, sometimes with a gradual progress, 

 comparable to the building-up of the chick out of the 

 egg, sometimes with a sudden metamorphosis, com- 

 parable to the transformation of the caterpillar into a 

 butterfly. For ordinary operations it remains true 

 that neither matter nor energy can disappear; and the 

 original doctrines of conservation have not been in 

 essence changed. Rutherford has succeeded in knock- 

 ing hydrogen nuclei out of nitrogen, using alpha par- 

 ticles of radium as his projectiles, but this does not 

 mean that anything has been magically created out of 

 nothing; and even if it be true that a mutually fatal 

 collision of an electron and a proton gives rise to a 

 radiation, this does not mean that any energy has 

 magically disappeared. 



Our point is simple enough, that the world became 

 scientifically new when it became certain that in all 

 ordinary operations, however drastic the changes may 

 be, the amount of matter remains constant, though its 

 form may entirely change; and this idea became a 

 very vivid one when Liebig demonstrated the Circu- 

 lation of Matter, — that particular elements are ever 

 changing their partners in a ceaseless cosmic dance, so 

 that we picture a nitrogen cycle, a carbon cycle, a 

 sulphur cycle, an iron cycle, and so on, all the world 

 over, forever and ever, until changes cease. Similarly, 

 the idea of the Conservation of Energy became more 

 graphic, when Faraday and others demonstrated the 

 transformabillty of the different forms of energy. 

 Thus the waterfall turns the wheels which generate 

 electricity; and this is used to warm and illumine and 



