Most scientists are quite aware that since we have 
acquired some knowledge of electricity it is not possible to 
speak of atoms as pieces of matter. Again, as more is known 
about electrical “discharges” and energy, there is less and less 
tendency to speak of electricity as a thing that “flows” like 
water through a wire, or is “contained” in a battery. Rather, the 
tendency is to speak of electricity as painters speak of space; 
namely, that it is a variable condition that involves the special 
positions of two or more bodies.

     There is no longer any tendency to speak of electricity as 
“contained” in anything. Painters have long known that objects 
are not contained in space, but that they generate their own 
spaces. It was the dawning awareness of this in the 
mathematical world a century ago that enabled Lewis Carroll, 
the Oxford mathematician, to contrive Alice in Wonderland , in