St. Paul daily globe., 1896-03-15


Note-Barometer corrected for temperature
and elevation. p. L. Lyons, Observer.
Is IT 4 WORLD OF MATTER?
Conjecture and investigation are still
busy with the wonderful phenomenon
recently discovered in connection with
the so-called X rays. With the facility
of a people who have become stated
with the novel, we have already accus-
toned ourselves to the idea Of
what, a few months ago, would
have appeared but an idle specula-
tion. The school boy today will tell
you glibly how the bony structure of
animals and the contents of purses and
heavy boxes may be photographed by
the light of the CrooI1es tube. Already
this has taken its place with the tele-
phone and the electric motor, having
scarcely had its allotted nine days Of
WOnderment. A whole army of pos
sibilities behind it are emerging into
view. One set of professors declare that
they have already obtained similar re-
suits without the intervention Of the
CrOOkes tube or the electric current, by
exposures to the rays of ordinary sun
light or to calcium illumination. Tesla
tells us that it is probable that the
astonishing results obtained are not
due to any peculiarly penetrative quail
ity of the light rays themselves, but
that the impressions on the sensitized
plate may be created by the actual
impact of particles of matter which
have passed through the surrounding
envelope; or which, striking upon it's
outer covering, dislodge other particles
on the inner surface, as a stroke upon
the first of a row of balls arranged in
@ straight line will leave all the rest
motionless While sending the last one
across the table. Thus varied and in
teresting are the explanations and the
new contingencies which the advent of
the X rays has sent whirling through
the brain Of science
To those whose part it is to accept
with meekness the revelations of the
laboratory there is one conclusion to
be drawn from these singular and un-
expected researches which far over
shadows all others. This is the re-
vision which they make necessary of
the current idea of a world of matter.
Following humbly in the train of
science, they who have held that the in
tellect, acting only upon material fur
nished by the senses, is the sole arbiter
of fact, have gone far upon the way of
materialism. Everything has been
weighed and measured; has been
brought within the apprehension of
one or another of the senses. What
ever was without these belonged to a
country of dreams and phantoms where
sense and science were aliens. Matter
and all itc combinations we have anal
yzed to a nicely; and, although no one
has been found bold enough to profess
that he had reached the last step, had
uncovered the base of that primordial
stuff out of which worlds and thoughts
alike are made, still the current quail
tiles of matter were catalogued with
precision and a certainty that were
supposed to be final. Not yet had any
one reached to the secrets of the great
house of life. But all the avenues to it
were in the hands of the beleaguers,
and none could pass in or out save by
the five paths over which the senses
held their guard. And the testimony of
any one of these was ultimate and in
disputable in it's own domain.
Behold now, through another advance
of science, a revolution in the postu-
lates of science itself. Whatever we
may conclude about the nature or
source Of the X rays or about their
mechanical mode of operation, we are
face to face with phenomena that re-
quire a revision of our views of mat
ter. 1t is not telepathy, but the sl1ia-
graph that has confounded the learn
ing of the wise. 1t is not a psychical
phenomenon, but a definite impression
upon Photographic plate that we have
to deal with And in it's presence we
find such words as opacity and "im-
penetrability' either devoid of mean
ing or requiring a wholly new interpre-
tation. Matter we know, or supposed
we did, and light we know. We had
formed our nice little theories about
the way that the vibrations which are
supposed to constitute light affect and
are affected by the various material
4. substances that we have analyzed and
catalogued And here come a film of
paper and bulb made luminous with
the vacuum's aurora, and all our sys-
TENS go tumbling. This matter of ours,
then. must have new and unclassified