16 Transactions Texas Academy of Science. — 1906. 
to a considerable extent understood, but the mass which is merely 
material (whatever that may mean) is not understood at all. ” 5 
“What is this matter which) so many insist we must assume?” 
Bigelow asks, and answers: “No man can define it otherwise than in 
terms of energy. * # # Starting with any object and removing 
one by one its properties, indubitably forms of energy, we are finally 
left with a blank, a sort of hole in creation. * * # The last resort 
is the time-honored definition, 1 matter is the carrier of energy/ but 
it is impossible to describe it. The assumption that matter exists 
is made, then, because there must be a carrier of energy. But why 
must there be a carrier of energy? This is assertion, pure and 
simple, with no experimental backing.” 6 When solidity and mass 
or inertia are adequately explained as dynamic facts, and many 
puzzling physical facts are similarly accounted for, it is surely 
superfluous to seek further explanation in something more to be 
called matter, especially when no map can tell or ever has told us 
what he means by the word. 
This is not the place, even if it were necessary before this audi- 
ence, to set forth what we know about electric charges, but some 
mention should be made of the unification introduced into our 
knowledge by accepting these minute bodies as the building stones 
of the grosser structures more immediately experienced. 
A word first as to their size. “We are sure,” says Lodge, “that 
their mass is of the order one thousandth of the atomic mass of 
hydrogen, and we are sure that if they are purely and solely elec- 
trical their size must be one hundred-thousandth of the linear dimen- 
sions of an atom; a size with which their penetrating power and 
other behavior is quite consistent. Assuming this estimate to be 
true, it is noteworthy how very small these electrical particles are, 
compared to the atom of matter # # # If an electron is repre- 
sented by a sphere an inch in diameter, the diameter of an atom 
of matter on the same scale is a mile and a half. Or if an atom 
of matter is represented by the size of this theater (the Sheldonean), 
the electron is represented on the same scale by a printers’ full stop.” 
“It is a fascinating guess,” he proceeds a little later, “that the 
electrons constitute the fundamental substratum of which all matter 
is composed. That a group of say 700 electrons, 350 positive and 350 
negative, interleaved or interlocked in a state of violent motion, so 
as to produce a stable configuration under the influence of their 
centrifugal inertia and their electric forces, constitute an atom of 
hydrogen. That sixteen times as many, in another stable grouping, 
B Loc. cit. 
®Loc. cit. 
