Page:ScienceAndHypothesis1905.djvu/212

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guests to find a place for! No one can yet predict the place they will occupy, but I do not believe they will destroy the general unity; I think that they will rather complete it. On the one hand, indeed, the new radiations seem to be connected with the phenomena of luminosity; not only do they excite fluorescence, but they sometimes come into existence under the same conditions as that property; neither are they unrelated to the cause which produces the electric spark under the action of ultra-violet light. Finally, and most important of all, it is believed that in all these phenomena there exist ions, animated, it is true, with velocities far greater than those of electrolytes. All this is very vague, but it will all become clearer.

Phosphorescence and the action of light on the spark were regions rather isolated, and consequently somewhat neglected by investigators. It is to be hoped that a new path will now be made which will facilitate their communications with the rest of science. Not only do we discover new phenomena, but those we think we know are revealed in unlooked-for aspects. In the free ether the laws preserve their majestic simplicity, but matter properly so called seems more and more complex; all we can say of it is but approximate, and our formulæ are constantly requiring new terms.

But the ranks are unbroken, the relations that we have discovered between objects we thought simple still hold good between the same objects