indications must be put aside in favour of a track lying in a rather different direction, the ultimate element of material constitution being taken to be an electric charge or nucleus of permanent aethereal strain instead of a vortex ring.
A view of the constitution of matter, which proves to be sufficient over an extensive range of physical theory and must not be made any more complex until it proves insufficient in some definite feature, asserts that the molecule is composed simply of a system, probably large in number, of positive and negative protions in a state of steady orbital motion round each other. Nothing has yet been done directly to examine how wide a field of possibility of different types of molecules and molecular combinations is thus opened up: but it is easy to recognize that the range is more extensive than would be offered by a Boscovichian system of attracting points, or of attracting polar molecules as in A. M. Mayer's illustrative experiments with magnetic elements, or by fluid vortex rings. Thus for example a system of electrons ranged along a circle, and moving round it with the speed appropriate for steadiness, constitutes a vortex ring in the surrounding aether: it will therefore enjoy to some extent the well-known wide limits of stability of such a ring[1]: and the stability will probably be maintained even when there are only a few electrons circulating at equal intervals round the ring. Again, a positive and a negative electron can describe circular orbits round each other, stable except as regards radiation, thus forming a simple type of molecule devoid of magnetic moment: or again, we might have a ring formed of electrons alternately positive and negative. And moreover we may imagine complex structures composed of these primary systems as units, for example successive concentric rings of positive or negative electrons sustaining each other in position.
The duality arising from the assumption of two kinds of electrons, only differing chirally so that one is the reflexion of
- ↑ It is here implied that the electrons are constrained by the attraction of an electron of opposite sign at the centre of the ring: as otherwise their mutual repulsions and the centrifugal forces would produce their dispersion. On the question of loss of energy by radiation from such a system, cf. Ch. xiv. infra.
