We all know that the nineteenth century was marked by a separation
of the sciences into a vast number of specialties, to the
subdivisions of which one could see no end. But the great work of
the twentieth century will be to combine many of these
specialties. The physical philosopher of the present time is
directing his thought to the demonstration of the unity of
creation. Astronomical and physical researches are now being
united in a way which is bringing the infinitely great and the
infinitely small into one field of knowledge. Ten years ago the
atoms of matter, of which it takes millions of millions to make a
drop of water, were the minutest objects with which science could
imagine itself to be concerned, Now a body of experimentalists,
prominent among whom stand Professors J. J. Thompson, Becquerel,
and Roentgen, have demonstrated the existence of objects so minute
that they find their way among and between the atoms of matter as
rain-drops do among the buildings of a city. More wonderful yet,
it seems likely, although it has not been demonstrated, that these
little things, called "corpuscles," play an important part in what
is going on among the stars. Whether this be true or not, it is
certain that there do exist in the universe emanations of some
sort, producing visible effects, the investigation of which the
nineteenth century has had to bequeath to the twentieth.
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