This very satisfactory comparison shows that the apparent total mass is sensibly equal to the electromagnetic mass; the material mass of the electron is therefore nil, and the whole of its mass is electromagnetic.
Thus the electron must be looked upon as a simple electric charge devoid of matter.

Previous examination has led us to attribute to it a mass a thousand times less that that of the atom of hydrogen, and a more attentive study shows that this mass was fictitious.

The electromagnetic phenomena which are produced when the electron is set in motion or a change effected in its velocity, simply have the effect, as it were, of simulating inertia, and it is the inertia due to the charge which has caused us to be thus deluded.
The electron is therefore simply a small volume determined at a point in the ether, and possessing special properties;[49] this point is propagated with a velocity which cannot exceed that of light.

When this velocity is constant, the electron creates around it in its passage an electric and a magnetic field; round this electrified centre there exists a kind of wake, which follows it through the ether and does not become modified so long as the velocity remains invariable.

If other electrons follow the first within a wire, their passage along the wire will be what is called an electric current.
[Footnote 49: This cannot be said to be yet completely proved.