The generation of a ring-vortex is of course equally
beyond the power of natural causes, but once generated, it has the
properties of individuality, permanence in quantity, and
indestructibility. It is also the recipient of impulse and of energy,
which is all we can affirm of matter; and these ring-vortices are
capable of such varied connexions and knotted self-involutions, that
the properties of differently knotted vortices must be as different as
those of different kinds of molecules can be.
If a theory of this kind should be found, after conquering the
enormous mathematical difficulties of the subject, to represent in any
degree the actual properties of molecules, it will stand in a very
different scientific position from those theories of molecular action
which are formed by investing the molecule with an arbitrary system of
central forces invented expressly to account for the observed
phenomena.
In the vortex theory we have nothing arbitrary, no central forces or
occult properties of any other kind.
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