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

qualities. In other words, we do not
know it at all. The light that streams
about us has properties as unguessed
at as the hidden ingredient of the at
mosphere that had eluded detection
until few months ago. Either it can
supposed to cast it back like bullet
from an armored casemate, or it's i'm
pact sends loose particles banging from
the inner wall; in which case that solid
material substance softens and loosens
to the consistency of the handfuls cf
sand that children hurl at one another
in their play.
The further we pry into the consti-
tuition of the universe, the more elusive
and phantasmic appears the substance
of ''this too, too solid EARTH" We are
beginning, under the tuition of the X
rays, to see it as an aggregation Of
rotating atoms, in which substance is
nothing and motion everything. We
are losing sight Of mass, and needing
to look only at directions and veloci-
ties. We are preparing next to revise
the creed of particles of some undis-
covered world-stuff in inconceivably
rapid motion, and to find motion only;
in medium, and transmitted by and
through something, too tenuous and
imperceptible to be the sport of our
rude senses. The world resolves itself
again into that mass of whirling
nebulae out of which science has taught
us that it may have emerged and all
the intermediate phases that we have
marked seem to have been but the
unsubstantial pageant of dream.
Such is the tendency of the latest
scientific experiment and teaching;
away from the definite, into the void,
where mere energy leaps and tolls not
through the stellar spaces. An age
that began in crude materialism, and
watched with awed and religious fer
vor to see if the spontaneous genera
tion Of life might not be discovered
within its stoppered walls, flames out
in the borealis streamers that bid us
wonder what will be left Of matter
when the last veil is drawn aside.
From the beginning there have been
two great opposite tendencies in
thought; two bases for a speculative
philosophy. The one view saw the
world as a universe of matter, working
through cells Of protoplasm, out of
whose combinations arose life and
mind and thought and soul. With it
ization of the man could transform a
cabbage, through the digestive proc
ess, into a poem, by the operation of
the brain cells. The other school saw
only universe Of mind, with men and
beasts and all the other visions of the
eye and touch stalking about 1t like
pictures thrown from the slides of
some great stereopticon. Nothing but
life, the vital principle; thought, the Gre
ative impulse; soul, the immortal part,
were in the category Of realities. To
1t the world was subjective. All the
evidence of the senses was only the del
icate deception that the mind wrought
for its pleasure; and existence, when
the riddle was solved, would sweep
away the material playthings and pict-
ure books that were we'll enough for
a race of beings in their infancy. With
varying fortunes these two theories
have contested for mastery Of the
field. 1t is long now since the sub
jective philosophy of a Berkeley was
supposed to have been banished, and
the cold facts of science held undis-
puted sway with q material scepter.
Now comes another advance, and our
ideas of the visible and tangible must
be reformed, and matter and motion
show us new phases and properties
irreconcilable with the old. The cycle
has swept around again; and they to
whom the invisible universe has always
sent it's messengers are asking whether,
after all, this is world Of matter or
a world Of spirit. From the photo
graphic lens and the electrode comes
message akin to that of the poet who
told US that "we are such stuff as
dreams are made Of" Out of the
myriad mouths of molecules come the
prophecy and promise of life.