Page:LangevinStLouis.djvu/23

 This conception, this electronic theory of matter in which matter becomes, at least partially, synonymous with electricity in motion, appears to account for an enormous number of facts, which increase constantly under the efforts of physicists impatient to contemplate in a less primitive form the synthesis which it promises to bring forward.

(30) Stability of the Electron. The fundamental conception, that of the electron, does not go without raising difficulties still further, besides the impossibility already pointed out of representing to ourselves by material images its displacement with respect to the ether. It seems necessary to admit something else in its structure than its electric charge, an action which maintains the unity of the electron and prevents its charge from being dissipated by the mutual repulsions of the elements which constitute it. The form of the electron is determined by some relation which insures its stability, the condition of incompressibility of the medium being insufficient, since the spherical form corresponds only to unstable equilibrium for an electrified body of given volume in which no force opposes the deformation.

This condition, which belongs to some fundamental property of the medium, determining the charge carried by the electrons, all identical from this point of view, is perhaps closely connected with the third mode of activity of the ether, a third form of energy, the gravitational form, of which our principle of stationary energy ought to take account by the addition of terms to those expressing the electrostatic energy, but of infinitely smaller magnitude.

(31) Gravitation. Gravitation remains obstinately outside of our electromagnetic synthesis; the Newtonian forces not only do not appear to be propagated with the velocity of light, but also it seems difficult to found them on electromagnetism without modifying profoundly our fundamental ideas in regard to field and quantity of electricity and the possibility of an attraction of one aggregation of neutral electrons for another aggregation of the same nature.

It appears probable that gravitation results from a mode of activity of the ether and a property of electrons entirely different from the electromagnetic mode, and we must admit besides electric and magnetic energies, a third distinct form, that of gravitation.

It remains to understand how it is possible, and what is the significance of the equivalence, the passage of this third form into one of the first two. Also we are no more capable of understanding, outside of the formal equations which express it, the connection between the electric and magnetic energies themselves and their transformations, the one into the other, by means of the electrons.

(32) An Experiment Necessary. It does not seem impossible to connect the forces of cohesion with electromagnetism, especially