It is curious to reflect, for example, upon the remarkable legend of the Philosopher's Stone, one of the oldest and most universal beliefs, the origin of which, however far back we penetrate into the records of the past, we do not probably trace its real source.

Physical science enjoys the distinction of being the most fundamental of the experimental sciences, and its laws are obeyed universally, so far as is known, not merely by inanimate things, but also by living organisms, in their minutest parts, as single individuals, and also as whole communities. It results from this that, however complicated a series of phenomena may be and however many other sciences may enter into its complete presentation, the purely physical aspect, or the application of the known laws of matter and energy, can always be legitimately separated from the other aspects.

It is probable that all heavy matter possesses - latent and bound up with the structure of the atom - a similar quantity of energy to that possessed by radium. If it could be tapped and controlled what an agent it would be in changing the world's destiny! The man who put his hand on the lever by which a parsimonious nature regulates so jealously the output of this store of energy would possess a weapon by which he could destroy the earth if he chose.

But what sin is to the moralist and crime to the jurist so to the scientific man is ignorance.

[The human control of atomic energy could] virtually provide anyone who wanted it with a private sun of his own.

There is something sublime about its aloofness from and its indifference to its external environment.

An inexplicable fact is infinitely preferable to an incomprehensible mystery.