[Gnomermind-devel] Tive, and the like--"living inorganics, " and look

[Englemann C. <pe...@la...>]

By a church one hundred and sixty feet long, eighty feet broad, and
forty feet high; the electrons are like gnats inside it. Yet on the
electric theory of matter, electrons are all of the atom there is;
there is no church, but only the gnats rushing
about. We know of nothing so empty and hollow, so near a vacuum, as
matter
in this conception of it. Indeed, in the new physics, matter is only a
hole in the ether. Hence the newspaper joke about the bank sliding
down and leaving the woodchuck-hole sticking out, looks like pretty
good physics. The electrons give matter its inertia, and give it the
force we call cohesion, give it
its toughness, its strength, and all its other properties. They make
water wet, and the diamond hard. They are the fountain-head of the
immense stores of the inter-atomic energy, which, if it could be
tapped and controlled, would so easily do all the work of the world.
But this we cannot do. "We are no more competent,"
says Professor Soddy, "to make use of these supplies of atomic

energy than a savage, ignorant of how to kindle a fire, could make use
of a steam-engine." The natural
rate of flow of this energy from its atomic sources we get as heat,
and it suffices to keep life going upon this planet. It is the source
of all the activity we see upon the globe. Its results, in the
geologic ages, are stored up for us in coal and oil and natural gas,
and, in our day, are available in the winds, the tides, and the
waterfalls,
and in electricity. IV The electric constitution of matter is quite
beyond anything we can