ATOMS IDEALLY REPRESENTED. 



17 



the material world may be traced back, we stumble on 

 insoluble contradictions. An atom contemplated as a 

 minute, indivisible, inert mass, from which forces ema- 

 nate, is a chimera. In the impossibility of comprehend- 

 ing the nature of matter and force lies the only limit to 

 the knowledge of natural science." 



These propositions require some elucidation. Beyond 

 the subdivision mechanically possible, we must think of 

 substance or matter as consisting of particles ultimately 

 indivisible. Of these atoms, according to the present 

 standpoint of science, we are obliged to admit as many 

 different species as are not chemically reducible to more 

 simple elements. Now there is no doubt that these atoms 

 are, in the actual sense of the word, imaginary, hypothet- 

 ical quantities; and theory seems to indicate that all 

 matter, in the most dififerent phenomena in the material 

 world, is based on a single species of atom. 



Every manual of physics or physiology will show that, 

 in order to understand and calculate the properties 

 of these atoms and their combinations into the ingre- 

 dients of compound bodies, susceptible of chemical 

 analysis, they are ideally represented under various 

 material forms, spherical, cubical, &c.; furthermore, that 

 in their combinations and co-operations as bodies, they 

 must be contemplated' as surrounded by a rarefied 

 atmosphere of an universally diffused ether. But the 

 atom itself, and therefore the nature of matter, is 

 something incomprehensible, unattainable. In these 

 atoms, forces are inherent, which display themselves in 

 attractions and repulsions, and in motion in general. 

 But the final cause of these motions, and how far these 

 motions are, as it were, identical with the existence of 



