lumps containing probably a great number of individual molecules.
8. Now, a drop of water no less than a grain of sand is built up of a very great number of molecules, attached to one another by the force of cohesion—a force which is much stronger in the sand than in the water, but which nevertheless exists in both. And, moreover, Sir William Thomson, the distinguished physicist, has recently arrived at the following conclusion with regard to the size of the molecules of water. He imagines a single drop of water to be magnified until it becomes as large as the earth, having a diameter of 8000 miles, and all the molecules to be magnified in the same proportion; and he then concludes that a single molecule will appear, under these circumstances, as somewhat larger than a shot, and somewhat smaller than a cricket ball.
9. Whatever be the value of this conclusion, it enables us to realize the exceedingly small size of the individual molecules of matter, and renders it quite certain that we shall never, by means of the most powerful microscope, succeed in making visible these ultimate molecules. For our knowledge of the sizes, shapes, and properties of such bodies, we must always, therefore, be indebted to indirect evidence of a very complicated nature.
It thus appears that we know little or nothing about the shape or size of molecules, or about the forces which actuate them; and, moreover, the very largest masses of the universe share with the very smallest this property
