Page:The Harveian oration 1903.djvu/59

THE HARVEIAN ORATION, 1903 §3

Réntgen rays. Hence the electron “is the most definite and fundamental and simple unit which we know of in nature.” Whether, however, the electron is to be considered as solely consisting of electrical charge, or whether this be associated with a material particle is a moot point. Some hold that the latter is non-existent, and that in place of there being two kinds of inertia, which we speak of as material and electrical, the latter alone exists, the atom therefore being ‘“‘ composed solely of electricity.” Such a concept of the electrical nature of matter is obviously a more precise expression of the monistic theory, in accord with which matter and energy are but convertiblé terms. Such a hypothesis suggests also that the various elements as we know them are but “different groupings of one fundamental constituent,” the atom of each one consisting of its own special number of electrons; the unity of matter being thus arrived at.

Highly speculative as such considerations are, they nevertheless find support in electrical phenomena, and still further in radio-activity, of which we have heard so much in connection with radium and allied substances. This radioactivity “consists in the flinging away with great violence of actual atoms,” which exceed in their rate of movement the fastest cannon-ball ever