and your microscope lens a little universe of oscillatory and vibratory
molecules. If you think of the universe, thinking at the level of atoms,
there is neither knife to cut, scale to weigh, nor eye to see. The
universe at that plane to which the mind of the molecular physicist
descends has none of the shapes or forms of our common life whatever.
This hand with which I write is, in the universe of molecular physics, a
cloud of warring atoms and molecules, combining and recombining,
colliding, rotating, flying hither and thither in the universal
atmosphere of ether.

You see, I hope, what I mean when I say that the universe of molecular
physics is at a different level from the universe of common
experience;--what we call stable and solid is in that world a freely
moving system of interlacing centres of force, what we call colour and
sound is there no more than this length of vibration of that. We have
reached to a conception of that universe of molecular physics by a great
enterprise of organised analysis, and our universe of daily experiences
stands in relation to that elemental world as if it were a synthesis of
those elemental things.

I would suggest to you that this is only a very extreme instance of the
general state of affairs, that there may be finer and subtler
differences of level between one term and another, and that terms may
very well be thought of as lying obliquely and as being twisted through
different levels.

It will perhaps give a clearer idea of what I am seeking to convey if I
suggest a concrete image for the whole world of a man's thought and
knowledge. Imagine a large clear jelly, in which at all angles and in
all states of simplicity or contortion his ideas are imbedded. They are