Magnetism becomes
intelligible as a condition of a body in which the electrons
revolve round the atom in nearly the same plane. The difference
between positive and negative electricity is at least partly
illuminated. An atom will repel an atom when its equilibrium is
disturbed by the approach of an additional electron; the
physicist even follows the movement of the added electron, and
describes it revolving 2200 billion times a second round the
atom, to escape being absorbed in it. The difference between good
and bad conductors of electricity becomes intelligible. The atoms
of metals are so close together that the roaming electrons pass
freely from one atom to another, in copper, it is calculated, the
electron combines with an atom and is liberated again a hundred
million times a second. Even chemical action enters the sphere of
explanation.
However these hypotheses may fare, the electron is a fact, and
the atom is very probably a more or less stable cluster of
electrons. But when we go further, and attempt to trace the
evolution of the electron out of ether, we enter a region of pure
theory. Some of the experts conceive the electron as a minute
whirlpool or vortex in the ocean of ether; some hold that it is a
centre of strain in ether; some regard ether as a densely packed
mass of infinitely small grains, and think that the positive and
negative corpuscles, as they seem to us, are tiny areas in which
the granules are unequally distributed.
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