382 DARWINISM AND THE PROBLEMS OF LIFE 



world, electricity, light, and the rest, are special forms of 

 ether-movement ; even matter is to be regarded as an 

 ether-movement, since the ultimate particles that make 

 up all bodies are centres of condensation in the ether. 

 It is the task of science, therefore, to determine the 

 various categories of ether-movement, and to express 

 light, electricity, and even matter in mathematical formulae. 

 Will it ever be possible to analyse bodies so finely as 

 to bring the ether-particles to light ? No. Apart from 

 the fact that every portion of a body must be itself a 

 body, not incorporeal ether, the latter entity has no 

 features of reality. In the reality that surrounds us 

 there are only divisible and transitory things, of which 

 no one absolutely resembles another. Each body, how- 

 ever small, has its individuality ; this becomes all the 

 clearer the more thoroughly we study it. Thus the 

 apparently similar grains of sand betray their individual 

 differences under the microscope. But the ether- 

 particles cannot have individual characteristics, and 

 so they are quite unimaginable. The world speaks 

 to us through all our senses with its infinite character- 

 istics/ and we cannot picture to ourselves bodies with- 

 out properties, such as the ether-particles must be. 



'■ Thus the ether-particles explain phenomena and matter. But the 

 ultimate elements of matter also, the primitive atoms, are something 

 unreal, because they must be absolutely identical, and because no 

 further body can be produced by subdividing them. In fact, the 

 atoms themselves cannot have individuality. But we know that there 

 cannot be anything that is not individual, and that no body is 

 absolutely identical with another. We must, therefore, regard even 

 the atoms only as a device of knowledge. We see here the value of 

 such a contrivance. Chemistry has made marvellous achievements 

 precisely through its atomic theory. 



