tter, and which are so
small that they are no longer divisible, as if they were solid bodies
with weight and form, with centre and circumference, colliding with one
another like billiard-balls, or like cosmic bodies in the depths of
space, striking one another squarely, and, for aught I know, each going
through another, or else grazing one another and glancing off. To
particles of matter so small that they can no longer be divided or made
smaller, the impossible feat of each going through the centre of
another, or of each enveloping the other, might be affirmed of them
without adding to their unthinkableness. The theory is that if we divide
a molecule of water the parts are no longer water, but atoms of hydrogen
and oxygen--real bodies with weight and form, and storehouses of energy,
but no longer divisible.

Indeed, the atomic theory of matter leads us into a non-material world,
or a world the inverse of the solid, three-dimensioned world that our
senses reveal to us, or to matter in a fourth estate. We know solids and
fluids and gases; but emanations which are neither we know only as we
know spirits and ghosts--by dreams or hearsay. Yet this fourth or
ethereal estate of matter seems to be the final, real, and fundamental
condition.

How it differs from spirit is not easy to define. The beta ray of radium
will penetrate solid iron a foot thick, a feat that would give a spirit
pause. The ether of space, which science is coming more and more to look
upon as the mother-stuff of all things, has many of the attributes of
Deity. It is omnipresent and all-powerful. Neither time nor space has
dominion over it. It is the one immutable and immeasurable thing in the
universe. From it all things arise and to it they return. It is
everywhere and nowhere. It has none of the finite properties of
matter--neither parts, form, nor dimension; neither density nor tenuity;
it cannot be compressed nor expanded nor moved; it has no inertia nor
mass, and offers no resistance; it is subject to no mechanical laws, and
no instrument or experiment that science has yet devised can detect its
presence; it has neither centre nor circumference, neither extension nor
boundary. And yet science is as convinced of its existence as of the
solid ground beneath our feet. It is the one final reality in the
universe, if we may not say that it is the universe. Tremors or
vibrations in it reach the eye and make an impression that we call
light; electrical osc