We have to ask where the matter,
which we are going to gather into worlds, itself came from; to
understand more clearly what is the relation to it of the forces
or energies --gravitation, electricity, etc.--with which we
glibly mould it into worlds, or fashion it into living things;
and, above all, to find out its relation to this mysterious ocean
of ether in which it is found.
Less than half a century ago the making of worlds was, in popular
expositions of science, a comparatively easy business. Take an
indefinite number of atoms of various gases and metals, scatter
them in a fine cloud over some thousands of millions of miles of
space, let gravitation slowly compress the cloud into a globe,
its temperature rising through the compression, let it throw off
a ring of matter, which in turn gravitation will compress into a
globe, and you have your earth circulating round the sun. It is
not quite so simple; in any case, serious men of science wanted
to know how these convenient and assorted atoms happened to be
there at all, and what was the real meaning of this equally
convenient gravitation. There was a greater truth than he knew in
the saying of an early physicist, that the atom had the look of a
"manufactured article.
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