UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
can be so small that it might not be smaller, or so 
large that it might not be larger; that space is with- 
out limits, creation without beginning; that at the 
centre of the earth there is no up and no down, on 
its surface no under and no over. Two waves of 
sound may interfere with each other and produce a 
silence, and two waves of light produce a darkness. 
Molecular physics has made great strides since 
Huxley’s time. With all the phenomena of electric- 
ity before him, he could not conceive of electricity 
as a positive entity; he seems to have regarded it 
as only a mode of motion, like heat. How shall we 
think of dematerialized substance, of disembodied 
energy, of a fluid as elusive and ubiquitous as 
thought itself, or of the transformation of one form 
of energy into another, as of electrical energy into 
mechanical? Electricity disappears in matter be- 
yond the reach of any analysis to reveal; it is sum- 
moned again from matter as by the wave of a wand. 
In a thunderstorm we see it rend the heavens and 
disappear again into its impossible lair as quick as 
thought —energy which is not energy. Yet we 
know the reality of all these things, and the atomic 
theory of electricity is securely established. This 
gross matter with which life struggles, and which we 
conceive of as at enmity with spirit, is far more 
wonderful stuff than we have ever dreamed of, and 
the step from the clod to the brain of man is not so 
impossible as it seems. There is deep beneath deep 
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