73Q THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



not " brass and iron or steel " manifest the phenomena of watch-mak- 

 ing ? For essentially the same reason that primitive man did not 

 manifest them : because in these metals, as in primitive man in an 

 immensely less degree, the synthesis of forces is too simple and un- 

 evolved, it being a law of matter that every state of material forces 

 not only is derived from preceding states, and manifests phenomena 

 peculiar to itself, but that the more complex and evolved the state, 

 the more complex and evolved the phenomena. In this law, speaking 

 broadly, we have a key to the source of life. Oxygen, hydrogen, 

 carbon, and nitrogen, uncombined, present, for example, one state of 

 material forces, which manifests one set of phenomena ; water, formed 

 by the combination of oxygen and hydrogen, is another state, less 

 simple, and manifesting less simple phenomena ; alcohol, resulting 

 from the union of oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon, is another state, 

 more complex, and manifesting more complex phenomena ; carbonate 

 of ammonia, consisting of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen, is 

 another state, more complex still, and manifesting phenomena of cor- 

 responding complexity ; and protoplasm, containing the same elements 

 as carbonate of ammonia, but united in higher multiples, and uniting 

 under conditions unknown though not unknowable, is simply another 

 state, more complex than any of the others, and manifesting the phe- 

 nomena of life, which, it deserves to be noted, are no more peculiar to 

 life than the phenomena of alcohol are peculiar to alcohol, or the phe- 

 nomena of water peculiar to water. The peculiarity is the peculiarity 

 of every state alike, as could hardly be otherwise, unless a thing could 

 be itself and at the same time something else. 



In the lower states of matter this law offers no difficulty ; but, as 

 the successive states become more and more removed from the ele- 

 mentary state, exhibiting phenomena more and more removed from 

 the elementary phenomena, it grows, first indistinct, next unperceived, 

 then unimagined, till at length, culminating in life and mind, it eludes 

 definite conception in the bewildering complexity of the phenomena, 

 and its consummate product, puffed up by the height to which it has 

 raised him, turns round and disowns it altogether, perversely kicking 

 over the ladder by which he ascended, and proudly asserting his right 

 to pose upon nothing. Yet the law is none the less operative at every 

 stage, from nebula to consciousness, and in itself is as comprehensible 

 in the last stage as in the first. That one synthesis of forces should 

 issue in life is at bottom not more wonderful than that another syn- 

 thesis should issue in water. The two manifestations are equally com- 

 prehensible up to a certain point, beyond which they are equally in- 

 comprehensible, a mystic chasm, soundless yet crossed by a step, 

 bounding equally every atom of the wide universe ; only, in so simple 

 a thing as water, the step whereby we cross this ever-recurring inter- 

 val need not be often repeated, and the approach is comparatively 

 open, whereas, in life, to say nothing of mind, the step is to be taken 



