The most prudent physicists and those most respectful to established
principles may, without any scruples, admit the explanation of the
radioactivity of radium by a dislocation of its molecular edifice. The
matter of which it is constituted evolves from an admittedly unstable
initial state to another stable one. It is, in a way, a slow
allotropic transformation which takes place by means of a mechanism
regarding which, in short, we have no more information than we have
regarding other analogous transformations. The only astonishment we
can legitimately feel is derived from the thought that we are suddenly
and deeply penetrating to the very heart of things.
But those persons who have a little more hardihood do not easily
resist the temptation of forming daring generalisations. Thus it will
occur to some that this property, already discovered in many
substances where it exists in more or less striking degree, is, with
differences of intensity, common to all bodies, and that we are thus
confronted by a phenomenon derived from an essential quality of
matter.
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