F. W. Very — A Cosmic Cycle. 189 



alternation or slow cycle ; or, on the other hand, if atoms perish 

 in stellar foci, they must be reborn in the interstellar spaces. 

 Is there any way in which atoms can be conceived to originate 

 in free space \ I think that we begin to have a glimmering 

 perception of such a possibility. Although it is customary to 

 assume that the ether is completely devoid of viscosity, the 

 relative scarcity of the fainter stars indicates that a minute 

 fraction of the radiation which passes through the ether from 

 myriads of stars is retained by that medium, eventually extin- 

 guishing the rays. If retained, the radiation must. perform 

 work. The only permanent change which can be effected in 

 the ether is the imparting of that structure which constitutes 

 matter. It becomes increasingly probable that atoms are 

 ethereal vortices. I have only room for the most cursory 

 treatment of the subject. 



The Vortex Atom as a Possible Solution. 



The vortical hypotheses of Descartes were vague and pre- 

 posterous. Those of Swedenborg were more rational, but 

 lacked mathematical refinement. His conception of a gather- 

 ing of something like a hundred or a thousand cored vortices 

 (somewhat similar to simple vortices of the type devised by 

 Hicks) forming the universal luminiferous medium, which, 

 flowing vortically in a circumscribed volume, produces a vortex 

 of the second order, constituting one of the least particles of 

 such atmospheres as surround the earths in the starry heavens,* 

 has a remarkable analogy with Professor J. J. Thomson's 

 discoveries, from which it follows that somewhere in the neigh- 

 borhood of a thousand corpuscles are consociated in the hydrogen 

 atom.t Helmholtz's splendid studies of aerial vortex rings,;); 

 and Lord Kelvin's recognition^ that similar movements in a 

 frictionless medium, such as the luminiferous ether has been 

 assumed to be, will give the permanence required in atoms, lent 

 considerable stability to the doctrine of vortex-atoms ; and the 

 deeply mathematical discussion of Professor J. J. Thomson,^ 



Life and Works," by J. C. Irons, London, 1896. p. 320. Herbert Spencer, in a 

 letter to Dr. Croll (loc. cit., p. 322), points out that " instead of the formation of 

 bodies thus raised to high temperature, and continuing thereafter to radiate heat 

 for long periods as suns, the argument is rather to the effect that the heat evolved 

 by such collisions, taking place with the enormous velocities eventually acquired 

 by stars gravitating into clusters and coming into collision, will have the effect of 

 dissipating the matter they are formed of into the gaseous state and eventually 

 into a nebulous form." Letter of 24th February, 1877. 



* Emanuel Swedenborg, Principia, Part I, Chap. 6, Arts. 2, 20, 34, 38; 

 Chap 7, Arts. 3, 4, 6, 7 and 20 (subsection 1). 



t J. J. Thomson, "On the Masses of the Ions in Gases at Low Pressures," 

 Phil. Mag. (5), vol. xlviii, p. 547, 1899. 



X H. Helmholtz. "On Integrals of the Hydrodynamical Equations which ex- 

 press Vortex-motion," translated by P. G-. Tait, Phil. Mag. (4), vol. xxxiii, p. 485, 

 1867. from Crelle (1858). 



§ W. Thomson, "On Vortex Atoms," Proc. R. S. Edinburgh, vol. vi, p. 94, 

 1867. f J. J. Thomson, " On Vortex Motion," 1882. 



