The progress of science is continually toward a dematerialization of matter. Physical analysis resolves the crude, heavy, solid stuff that our senses show us into finer and finer particles farther and farther apart until these practically disappear into mere points of irradiating influence. First the mass is divided into the molecule and this again into the atom, assumed, at the time it was invented, to be the ultimate unit of matter. But recently the atom has been shown to be a sort of solar system, but more complex, composed of hundreds of electrons, corpuscles of electricity, whose radius is calculated to be 1/10,000,000,000,000 of a centimeter (a centimeter is so ---- long). “But the size of the centers of disturbance, which in Einstein’s theory are associated with matter, bears to the size of the electron about the same proportion as the size of the smallest particle visible under the most powerful microscope to that of the earth itself.”[7] The old axiom was, “matter cannot act where it is not.” The new version might rather read: “matter cannot act except where it is not.” That is to say, attention is now directed to the space surrounding a material body or electrical corpuscle. Although we laymen are not concerned with the niceties of astronomical measurements there is an aspect of this conflict of theories that does interest us. The theory of Newton or, to go back further, of Galileo, that the earth moves around the sun, altered profoundly the philosophical and religious beliefs of the world, and the theory of Einstein is much more far-reaching and revolutionary in its metaphysical implications than the former. Professor Planck, who has just received the Nobel Prize for his discoveries in physics, said of Einstein’s first paper: It surpasses in boldness everything previously suggested in speculative natural philosophy and even in the philosophical theories of knowledge. Non-Euclidean geometry is child’s play in comparison.... The revolution introduced into the physical conceptions of the world is only to be compared in extent and depth with that brought about by the Copernican system of the universe. MUTABLE THEORIES AND STABLE FACTS