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Those who are of a mystic or metaphysical turn of mind may discern in this, arguments for matter and laws of matter being after all only manifestations of one universal, all-pervading mind; but in following such speculations we should be deserting the solid earth for cloudland, and passing the limit of positive knowledge into the region where reflections of our own hopes, fears, religious feelings, and poetical sentiments form and dissolve themselves against the background of the great unknown. For the present, therefore, I confine myself to pointing out how these undoubted truths of mathematical science, which have verified themselves in the practical form of enabling us to predict eclipses and construct nautical almanacs, correspond with and throw light upon the equally certain facts of this succession of infinitely small quantities of successive orders in the constitution of matter.

An attempt has recently been made, based on abstruse mathematical calculations, to carry our knowledge of the constitution of matter one step further back, and identify atoms with ether. This is attempted by the vortex theory of Helmholz, Sir W. Thomson, and Professor Tait. It is singular how some of the ultimate facts discovered by the refinements of science correspond with some of the most trivial amusements. Thus the blowing of soap-bubbles gives the best clue to the movement of waves of light, and through them to the dimensions of molecules and atoms; and the collision of billiard-balls, knocked about at random, to the movements of those minute bodies, and the kinetic theory of gases. In the case of the vortex theory the idea is given by the rings of smoke which certain adroit smokers amuse themselves by puffing into the air. These rings float for a considerable time, retaining their circular form, and showing their elasticity by oscillating about it and returning to it if their form is altered, and by rebounding and vibrating energetically, just as two solid elastic bodies would do, if two rings come into collision. If we try to cut them in two, they recede before the knife, or bend round it, returning, when the external force is removed, to their original form without the loss of a single particle, and preserving their own individuality through every change of form and of velocity. This persistence of form they owe to the fact that their particles are revolving in small circles at right angles to the axis or circumference of the larger circle which forms the ring; motion thus giving them stability, very much as in the familiar instance of the bicycle. They burst at last because they are formed and rotate in the air, which is a resisting medium; but mathematical calculation shows that in a perfect fluid free from all friction these vortex rings would be indivisible and indestructible: in other words, they would be atoms.