  The Higgs mechanism is designed to generate mass for massless particles. The
mass comes from the interaction of observed particles with an external field --
the Higgs field. In the past, several alternatives to the Higgs mechanism for
mass generation have been proposed to avoid the postulation of the Higgs field.
This article proposes yet another one. This alternative is distinctly different
from the others because it considers mass generation through internal
interactions of a particle rather than interactions with external fields. This
requires particles to have an internal structure beyond intrinsic spin. A
complete field theory of such composite particles is seen to be possible. Of
course, if Higgs bosons are observed by experiment, there will be no need for
any alternatives. On the other hand, if experiment fails to detect Higgs
bosons, such alternate mechanisms for particle mass generation would be very
useful.
