Page:The fairy tales of science.djvu/73

Rh were we to confine our observations, as they did, to the external properties of matter, we should be forced to acknowledge the justice of their conclusions.

In some sense the world is really made up of the four elements. Fire may be said to represent the imponderable agents—heat, light, and electricity; the remaining elements, the three physical states of ponderable matter, namely, the gaseous, liquid, and solid. The difference between our present views and those of the ancients consists in this, we regard these states as mere modes of existence, while they believed them to be distinct principles.

We must now take leave of the Four Elements, as we fear our readers are growing impatient for another story from the plenteous budget of Science.