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CONCEPTIONS OF MATTER: ANCIENT

AND MODERN.

YHE science that deals witli the constitution of matter has

occupied the time and energies of countless generations of
men since the time of Adam, who, possibly, was himselt an
alchemist, as one might be led to believe when he reads of

" A book where Moses and his sister,

And Solomon have written of the arl."(i).

The (juest of the alchemist was the jiroduction of no " substances

and the conversion of one form of matter iiito other forms by a
process of transmutation. 'J'his was possible, he arjjjued, because,
in nature, plants and animals were si-en to ^^row, change, de-
velop, and die, and that therefore the same growth and develop-
ment ought to proceed in the minural kingdom. Just a-, a grrtiu
o\ seed in the ground died, and from its dead body arose the
perfect plant or tree, so, in the earth, the metals wire looked
upon as undergoing a growth an<l becoming more i)erfecl— in
time reaching the higiiest stage of all. namely, gold.
Alchemy tlid not gi\e placo to -lu'inistry pioper tuuil the
eighteenth century, and, in its b'ug life, exjieric nce<l many vicis-
situdes. Its students and followers were not n;e;-ely naturil
but also moral philosophers; the}' regarded nature from both
standpoints, watched and studied the course '
nature ,is ex-
eni])lifie(i by the growth (if living things, vegetable and animal,
endeavoured to discover the secret f)f her workings, and trusted
to be able to apply this secret to the transmutation of the baser
into the nobler metals, to the i)roduction of an V.lixir I'ittic, which
would be the em-e of all ills. and. as a result "f this, hoped for
the mental h.ippinoss wbi li w<nild follow i.dni the practical
knowledge of the supreme secrvt of nature. 'Iheir (|uest was
for an ti-idefinable something, called by various writers "the one
tlung," "the philosophy 's stone," "the essenee." "the si>;il ot all th nt^s,"

and by many other names.

(i) The .llcliciiiist: by Ben Jonson, 1610.
 3 CONCEPTIONS OF MATTER.
Though some alchemists hcheved in the power of this
•'essence." (wliich was presumed
to have a (hial nature, material
and spiritual), to create thinjrs.yet the l.est writers
seem to have
had a real helief in the .Supreme lieiuf,' as
alone having p„wer
to create and destnu they h„pol only to make one form
;

of
matter mto a different form, not to create it.
this could
'fliat
he done they believed implicitly, and a simple
illustration wiU
show in how far their helief was justifie.l. The mineral galena,
winch is a sulphide of lead containiu},' some silver,
has some-
what the appearance of the metal lead itself. This,
when snh-
jicted to treatment, yields lead; and the lead in
turn, on heat-
ing and ruuoving the "calx." or earthy
material formed, dis-
appears, leaviufj a small portion of the precious
metal silver.
The alchemist took no consideration of the relative nitantitics of
orijfinal material and the residual silver
obtained: he used his
results to confirm his i)recouceived theory of the
transmutation
of the baser metal, and did not, as would have
been more logical,
deduce a theory from his experimental results. 'I'he alchemist's
belief remained Orndy fixed in his mind, was a
i)art of his system
of ethics, indeed,not only from the example just given but' from
hisobservation of nature. That lead could not. by one wave
of iho alchemistic wand.' he converted at once into
gold he quite
understood; a series of purifications, of "trying in the fire," was
required before the perfect metal was obtained. In 77/r Alchemist
this view is expressed in these lines: —
Xor can this remote matter suddenly
Progress as from extreme unto extreme,
-As to grow gold, and leap o'er all the means.
Nature doth first beget the imperfect, then
Proceeds she to the perfect.

It \vas a far cry from the earlier alchemist to the chemists

of the nineteenth century, or to the time when the ideas of trans-
mutation had to give way,— thanks to Priestly. Lavoisier, and
others.— to theories evolved from the results of careful investiga-
tion of the quantitative changes occurring during chemical opera-
tions. The enunciation of Dalton's hypothesis of atoms ])laced
chemistry on a new basis, and was the commencement of an
era of phenomenal progress in chemical science.
According to
this theory, matter is conqjosed of combinations of the atoms of
elementary substances with erne another, which unite together,
by reason of their chemical afifinitv, to form molecules of new
 CONCEPTIONS OF MATTliH.
substanci's. Mattrr. tlu'ri'fort', is cifiiiposi'd ni iiiinnti' in(li\ isil)lc

particles of tlu- same or of (lilTeri'iit I'li'iiieiits, ami of tluse ivery-

thinp that is appart-nt to the senses is made ii]>. (nt ami carve
down these particles as you nia\', in the end there is left the im-
ciittable i)article or atom of each element.
This liy])othesis of Dalton's was hy no means new: iiideii'
he merely resuscitated a theory juit forward more than two

thousand years previously, 'these early philosoidurs — Demo-

critus (Ii.C 460). Lucretius, the Latin poet who was horn ahout
a century before the Christian era^ — attem])tcd to connect the
diflfercnccs of size, shape, and <|ualities of forms of
various
matter with the difTe- Mi'-e- of size, shape, position, and nune-
ments of what thi the (7/i));(.\- of matter. 1'" verythinp;
material, they he!" . .'uosed of "a coalescence of certain
unchangeable and ;- ble ])articles": no atom of anything
could either be ere,, destr' I'd : w hen substances ceased to
exist, another was formed: no ...•struction of matter took place,
merely arearrangement of the atoms. The ancients were
evidently as fully alive to the soundness of the doctrine of the
indestructibility of matter as we are now. Their coueeiitum
of its various forms coincides with the modern ideas also; a -.nlw'
body consisted of a vast number of atoms s(|ueezed closelv to
gethcr. a licpu'd of a less nund)er more looselv connected, and a
gas of a still smaller nmnber able to move freely .ami <listribut-
ing themselves uniformly throughout the space containing them.
The atomic theory, as enunciated by the .Manchester school-
master (Dalton), was based on observations of the m;inncr in
which the elements combined with one another, namely in fixed
and definiteprojjortions :
—
the atoms of each element hatl a
definite weight peculiar to all the atoms of that particular
substance. This theory has served the purposes chemists <-<{

for the past century, and has been, and still is a convenient
quantitative method of ex])ressing chemical changts as they
occur. The chemist can calculate the amounts of material
necessary for the formation of new condjiuations — alike in the
factory as in the laboratory — and can prophesy the yield he will
obtain from the union of known < vuitities of different eU nients
or compounds. though the atomic theory has for so long
Jiut
been a perfect working l._>pothcsis from the chemist's i)oint of
view, recent researches, depending mostly on the study of
electricity and radio-activity, have led to the disi)lacement of
the atom from its jiosition as the unit form of matter. . .n
 4 CONCEPTIONS or MATTER.
atom is sl.jvs l> surety l)i-iiiy proved to consist of an approga-
l)iit

tion of still smalltT units, (clrctroiis, corpuscles or ions,—

call
them what you will) incapable of ,Jt..ction I.y onli-iry
-iH-mical methods. I.tit readily rec.-nisahle by the
physicist, oi,
account of their intluence in ren.leriuj;
drv air a conductor of
electricity. Professor |. j. Thomson, of Cambridge,
claims to
be able to .letect with certainty, l.y
electrical meth.xls, .piantitics
of radio-active substances less tb.n.
„ne huudred-thousan.lth ])ait
of the least .piantity which tlu
du mist c.mld detect bv any
uiethod of analysis known. 11 r stated in his lectures
delivered
at Yale Collese. some
eiffhteeu months aijo. that the <|uantitv
of these ra.liations which couM be
.letecte.l elect rjcallv were tn
the quantity of any known element
(s,.-callc.l), which could be
detected by ordinary chemical analysis,
in the proportion of a
second to a thousand years!
.'^ince the discovery of the Kontfjou ravs. in i8<>5. the
properties of emanations from the mineral
substances uranium,
thorium, and radium, have occupied the
attention of scientific in-
vestigators: and it is to tlu-m that we
owe the new ideas an<l
concfptions of matter as capable ..f existence
in even a more
attcntuated condition than ttu- atom From phenomena con-
nected with the emission of rays and emanations
from these radio-
active bodies, it is evident that they consist
of particles infinitelv
more minute than atoms. Tbe emission of atoms
themselves
seems .pute intellioible. as matter, in many forms,
can evapor-
ate, and some substances emit
a perfum. if not alwavs .
appreci-
able to human beinjjs certainly to the
lower order of animals. No
one has seen a smell, nor the wind, nor
the minute particles
worn away from a pavement, yet no one doubts
the existence
of these particles, lint, in the case of the emissions from radio-
active bodies, their speed is found to be enormous,
and their
atomic weight somethin- like one-thousandth
of the atomic
weight of hydrogen. The atom of matter must
therefore be
considered as complex, not simple, and
comi)oscd of a num-
ber of smaller bodies interleaved and
interlocked, and in a state
of rapid motion. Occasionally an atom loses one of these
minute constituent parts, which becomes separated
from it,
chipped off. as
were, and which Hies away at a speed which'
it

Sir Oliver Lodge has calculated as being

many thousand miles a
second: these portions thus separated are
kn.nvn as the « rays.
But this rupture of the atom
immediately followed by a further
is
splitting oft" of other parts of it. which are so minute
as to be
 CONCEPTIONS OF MATTKH.
al)I<.' to penetrati' tlirDiijjli solid l)o(lics ; and vtt a tliird or etluTi'al
einaiiatioii, calli-d tlic y rays, fullows as a coiisi-ciiu'iice of tlu-
break up of tlic atom. What, tluti, an- tlusi.' mimite portions
which thf cxpiTiniciita! physicist can roci)j;iiis<-, handle and iii-
vestij;ate? 'I'hey may In- called the corpuscles, or electrons,
and are of the order of nia:ty thonsamlths of the niaf^nitude of
an atom of matter, which is connnoidy estimated as being about
(nie fifty-ndllionth of an inch in diameter. Sii Oliver Lodjjc
has fjiven an illustration of the si/e of these corpuscles by ask-
ing one to imagine an atom of matt'T magnified to th'' size of
an oi<linary church, when '•'< con .tituent ions woidd '>e rejire-

se'-*e<l in size by this full .

!iis research into these str'';ing but obscure forms of radia

tion has laid the fomidalion of a new hypothesis regarding the
constitution of pll matter. 'Ihe i>henomena of radio-activity
have been foun<l not to bi' conlined entirely to the elciucnts
uranium, thoriutu, etc., which jiossess this property to a remark-
able degree, but to be common to a great niunber of things,
])Ossibly to all things material. It has bei'ii found that certain

mineral sjjrings are radio-active; rain, snow, hail, the air of «.»»
cellars, and the air contained in many soils, possess the smih"

properties: the atmosi)lierc itself has beon shown to cNbibit

this ])ro])erty. the experiments leading to iis result ha\iMg been
niade in our own Physical Department by Professor McLennan
and his assistants. Indeed, it might be sai<l tha corpuscles or
electrons are everywhere about, iiuessantl\' streaming from the
earth, from tlie ends of branches, from rail>. from telegraph
poles, and from the sun itself. These particle-, too. are all of
the same nature, size and kind, no luatter from where they may
come: and it seems likely that they constitute the jirimordial
fonu of matter, various cond)'natioTis of which, iiiterlocked to-
gether, go to make up what. i\\, to uf)w, ha\e been looked upon
as the elements, of which some seventy or eighty are roco;4uiscd
by chemists. .\nd does this mean that the ancient a'chemists
were not so very far wrong after all in tlieir belief that one form
of matter could be converted or transmuted into another? It

seems so, for, in experiments conducted m London by Sir

William Raiusay, the emanation from radium was found to have
lost its characteristics on standing for a week, and to have de-
veloped the properties of a known eleiucntary substar the
gas helium! The radium emanation had become ..stroyrd.
 -

6 CONCKPTIONS OK MATTKK.
altcrc.l-.lcgcneratc.l. one iniKl.t call
it.-i„(,, anMlhcr fur f
matter iiitircly !

What iut.rprctat tlun. can l,c put on these results

re-
garding the fundamental constitution
of all material things
Ihe existence of bodies infinitely sn.alier
than the smallest atom
has been clearly demonstrate.!, and.
for many reasons, it has
been concluded that they are
akin to electricity. Sir Oliver
Lodge holds that electricity possesses two of
the fun.lamental
properties of matter, namely mass
and inertia; li^jht and
electricity have been shown to he closely
allied to one another
•
n their mn.h. ami spej.,! „f propagation. is electricity m-tter
and IS matter electricity? Ilvidently they are closclv
related,
and If the corpuscles or eIe,:tro...s
emitted are not electricitv. thev
at east are the carriers of electricity.
The new conception of
matter seems to indicate that it and
electricitv are one and tin-
same thing, and that the chemisfs
atoms con'sist of svstems of
positive and n -ative electrons,
and of nothing else' If the
simplest atom, that of ,lroj,en, insists of. say.
1,
350 positively
and 350 negatively chared electrons,
interleaved together and
m a state of violent motion within themselves
„ some sixteen
,

times as many constitute the atom

of ox,„en. .-.nd other multiples
of iliis, the atoms of other elements.

W. R. L.ANG.