There are indeed theoretical objections to it which, though probably not insuperable, are unquestionably grave. Our seventy chemical "elements," for instance, are placed by the law of specific heats on a separate footing from their known compounds. We are not, it is true, compelled by it to believe their atoms to be really and absolutely such--to contain, that is, the "irreducible minimum" of material substance; but we do certainly gather from it that they are composed on a different principle from the salts and oxides made and unmade at pleasure by chemists. Then the multiplication of the species of matter with which Lockyer's results menace us, is at first sight startling. They may lead, we are told, to eventual unification, but the prospect appears remote. Their only obvious outcome is the disruption into several constituents of each terrestrial "element." The components of iron alone should be counted by the dozen. And there are other metals, such as cerium, which, giving a still more complex spectrum, would doubtless be still more numerously resolved. Sir Norman Lockyer interprets the observed phenomena as indicating the successive combinations, in varying proportions, of a very few original ingredients;[663] but no definite sign of their existence is perceptible; "protyle" seems likely long to evade recognition; and the only intelligible underlying principle for the reasonings employed--that of "one line, one element"--implies a throng beyond counting of formative material units.
Thus, added complexity is substituted for that fundamental unity of matter which has long formed the dream of speculators. And it is extremely remarkable that Sir William Crookes, working along totally different lines, has been led to analogous conclusions. To take only one example. As the outcome of extremely delicate operations of sifting and testing carried on for years, he finds that the metal yttrium splits up into five, if not eight constituents.[664] Evidently, old notions are doomed, nor are any preconceived ones likely to take their place. It would seem, on the contrary, as if their complete reconstruction were at hand. Subversive facts are steadily accumulating; the revolutionary ideas springing from them tend, if we interpret them aright, towards the substitution of electrical for chemical theories of matter. Dissociation by the brute force of heat is already nearly superseded, in the thoughts of physicists, by the more delicate process of "ionisation." Precisely what this implies and involves we do not know; but the symptoms of its occurrence are probably altogether different from those gathered by Sir Norman Lockyer from the collation of celestial spectra.