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eculations of Descartes, but of those of Aristotle. The resemblance of the 'vortex-rings' to the 'tourbillons' of Descartes is little more than nominal; but the correspondence between the modern and the ancient notion of a distinction between primary and derivative matter is, to a certain extent, real. For this ethereal 'Urstoff' of the modern corresponds very closely with the prhote hyle of Aristotle, the _materia prima_ of his mediaeval followers; while matter, differentiated into our elements, is the equivalent of the first stage of progress towards the heschhate hyle, or finished matter, of the ancient philosophy. If the material units of the existing order of nature are specialised portions of a relatively homogeneous _materia prima_--which were originated under conditions that have long ceased to exist and which remain unchanged and unchangeable under all conditions, whether natural or artificial, hitherto known to us--it follows that the speculation that they may be indefinitely altered, or that new units may be generated under conditions yet to be discovered, is perfectly legitimate. Theoretically, at any rate, the transmutability of the elements is a verifiable scientific hypothesis; and such inquiries as those which have been set afoot, into the possible dissociative action of the great heat of the sun upon our elements, are not only legitimate, but are likely to yield results which, whether affirmative or negative, will be of great importance. The idea that atoms are absolutely ingenerable and immutable 'manufactured articles' stands on the same sort of foundation as the idea that biological species are 'manufactured articles' stood thirty years ago; and the supposed constancy of the elementary atoms, during the enormous lapse of time measured by the existence of our universe, is of no more weight against the possibility of change in them, in the infinity of antecedent time, than the constancy of species in Egypt, since the days of Rameses or Cheops, is evidence of their immutability during all past epochs of the earth's history. It seems safe to prophesy that the hypothesis of the evolution of the elements from a primitive matter will, in future, play no less a part in the history of science than the atomic hypothesis, which, to begin with, had no greater, if so great, an empirical foundation. [Sidenote: The old and the new atomic theory.] It may perhaps occur to the reader that the boasted progress of
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