NATURE AS DRAMA AND ENGINERY. 499 



In the history of the earth the chapter which precedes that 

 written by the geologist is recited by the astronomer, whose key- 

 note also is dynamic. The bulk, inclination, speed, and composi- 

 tion of the earth were all predetermined in the constitution, mass, 

 and motion of the nebula which flung it forth. Dr. Huggins, his 

 spectroscope before him, tells us that were the earth to resume a 

 glowing heat it would yield much the same spectrum as the sun. 

 Clearly, then, the scope of life on land and sea, the architecture of 

 the forest, the ocean and the plain, with all their throbbing life, 

 are what they are because the atoms which built them were pres- 

 ent, and in such and such proportions, in the birth-cloud. If a 

 blossom has tints of incomparable beauty, they are conferred by 

 diverse elements thence derived, whose kin aflame in an orb, a 

 celestial diameter away, send forth the beam needful to reveal 

 that beauty. Were the sun less rich in variety of fuel than it is, 

 the world, despite its own diversity of element, would be vastly 

 less a feast for the eye than that which daily we enjoy. 



As in the realm of organic life the modern inter]3retation is no 

 longer static, so also in the sphere of Nature inorganic : it may be 

 that all the thrust, recoil, and interaction in the life of plant and 

 animal lay dormant in the simpler enginery of the atoms and 

 molecules which build their frames and supply their food. It was 

 one of the shrewd guesses of Sir Isaac Newton that the diamond 

 is a combustible body ; he did not suspect it to be one with coal in 

 substance, but he observed it to be highly refrangible, as many 

 combustible bodies are. His conjecture shows him to have taken 

 the first step toward the view of modern physicists and chemists 

 namely, that properties, the modes of behavior of matter, are not 

 passive qualities, but are due to very real activities ; that what a 

 substance is depends upon how in its ultimate parts it moves ; just 

 as organic structure can be deduced from living function because 

 regarded as the creation of function, or, as in more familiar cases, 

 the character of a die is inferred from its impress, and the con- 

 struction of a machine read in the work it executes. Clausius and 

 Maxwell, in a theory which marks an epoch, explained the elas- 

 ticity of gases as manifesting the ceaseless motion of their mole- 

 cules, declaring that an ounce of air within a fragile jar is able to 

 sustain the pressure of the atmosphere around it, because the air, 

 though only an ounce in weight, dashes against the containing 

 walls with an impact forcible enough to balance the external 

 pressure proof whereof consists in measuring the velocity with 

 which the air rushes into a vacuum. Here the significant point 

 is that in leaving the realm of mass-mechanics, where the tax of 

 friction is ever present and inexorable, we enter a sphere where 

 motion of the swiftest can go on forever without paying friction 

 the smallest levy. The elasticity of metallic springs has been 



