energy. And just before the century closed a light began to shine
in those deeper abysses of the submaterial world, and the
foundations of the universe began to appear.



CHAPTER II. THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE UNIVERSE

To the mind of the vast majority of earlier observers the phrase
"foundations of the universe" would have suggested something
enormously massive and solid. From what we have already seen we
are prepared, on the contrary, to pass from the inconceivably
large to the inconceivably small. Our sun is, as far as our
present knowledge goes, one of modest dimensions. Arcturus and
Canopus must be thousands of times larger than it. Yet our sun is
320,000 times heavier than the earth, and the earth weighs some
6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons. But it is only in resolving
these stupendous masses into their tiniest elements that we can
reach the ultimate realities, or foundations, of the whole.

Modern science rediscovered the atoms of Democritus, analysed the
universe into innumerable swarms of these tiny particles, and
then showed how the infinite variety of things could be built up
by their combinations. For this it was necessary to suppose that
the atoms were not all alike, but belonged to a large number of
different classes. From twenty-six letters of the alphabet we
could make millions of different words. From forty or fifty
different "elements" the chemist could construct the most varied
objects in nature, from the frame of a man to a landscape. But
improved methods of research led to the discovery of new