David added to his arm the centrifugal force of a sling when
he slew Goliath. The Romans improved on this by concentrating in a
catapult the strength of a score of slaves and casting stone cannon
balls to the top of the city wall. But finally man got closer to
nature's secret and discovered that by loosing a swarm of gaseous
molecules he could throw his projectile seventy-five miles and then by
the same force burst it into flying fragments. There is no smaller
projectile than the atom unless our belligerent chemists can find a way
of using the electron stream of the cathode ray. But this so far has
figured only in the pages of our scientific romancers and has not yet
appeared on the battlefield. If, however, man could tap the reservoir of
sub-atomic energy he need do no more work and would make no more war,
for unlimited powers of construction and destruction would be at his
command. The forces of the infinitesimal are infinite.
The reason why a gas is so active is because it is so egoistic.
Psychologically interpreted, a gas consists of particles having the
utmost aversion to one another.
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