and led them to conceive of the notions of mass and force which appeared a long while the most fundamental, those from which all the others ought to raminate. As the means of investigation have increased, as the more hidden facts have been discovered, we have thought for a long while to be able to reduce them to the old laws, to be able in fact to find an explanation of mechanical origin.
The actual tendency, of making the electromagnetic ideas to occupy the preponderating place, is justified, as I have sought to show, by the solidity of the double base on which rests the idea of the electron; on the one hand by the exact knowledge of the electromagnetic ether which we owe to Faraday, Maxwell, and Hertz, and on the other hand by the experimental evidence brought forward by the recent investigations into the granular structure of electricity. Moreover, this assurance which we express when considering the past is increased, if it is possible, when we consider the future.
Already all views, not only of the ether, but of matter, source and receiver of luminous waves, obtain an immediate interpretation which mechanics is powerless to give, and this mechanics itself appears to-day as a first approximation, largely sufficing in all cases of motion of matter taken in mass, but for which a more complete expression must be sought in the dynamics of the electron.
Although still very recent, the conceptions of which I have sought to give a collected idea are about to penetrate to the very heart of the entire physics, and to act as a fertile germ in order to crystallize around it, in a new order, facts very far removed from one another.
Falling in ground well prepared to receive it, in the ether of Faraday, Maxwell, and Hertz, the idea of the electron, an electrified movable centre which experiment to-day allows us to lay hold of individually, constitutes the tie between the ether and matter formed of a group of electrons.
This idea has taken an immense development in the last few years, which causes it to break the framework of the old physics to pieces, and to overturn the established order of ideas and laws in order to branch out again in an organization which one foresees to be simple, harmonious, and fruitful.
