SPECULATIONS ON THE NATURE OF MATTER. 799 



of a storm-cloud is a continuous process in the atmosphere, or the ap- 

 pearance of a rash in the human patient is continuous. But the cata- 

 clysm once accomplished, a new uniformity must have supervened, and 

 evolution proceeded from that point continuously from the simple to 

 the more heterogeneous, in accordance with strict dynamical law. 

 Even now the history of such evolution is as plainly to be read as the 

 history of the growth of plants in a forest. Some of the nebuloe give 

 evidence of being collections of the simplest primordial gases, or mix- 

 tures of such, by the simplicity of their spectral lines. Even in these, 

 radiant energy is being set free, or we could not know of their exist- 

 ence. We also know that the sun and stars are tremendous labora- 

 tories for the organization of matter, where disused motions are liber- 

 ated in torrents. The creation of molecules in gradually increasing 

 complexity seems to go on by discontinuous steps or stages, in accord- 

 ance with the discontinuous and discrete nature of the elemental fac- 

 tors ; and its products at each certain stage are all duplicates, whether 

 in this sun or that. Every increase in complexity apparently liberates 

 motion, which, by the law of conservation, must escape as an efficient 

 agent. With the constant escape of energy, however, solidification 

 finally ensues, as our planet bears witness, and the mobility of the 

 molecules practically ceases. Gases and moisture, however, remain 

 over to supply mobile conditions, and the work goes on. At this stage 

 new supplies of sufficient temperature from without are capable of re- 

 versing the process to a degree, restoring mobility, and introducing 

 new modes for the play of affinities. The radiant energies of the sun 

 supply for our planet the extraneous motion necessary to carry the 

 complexity of the molecule higher than the simple running down of 

 matter can do, and we have the chemistry of the carbon compounds. 

 Aided by some discontinuous step, which we can not as yet identify 

 or explain, vitalized functions appear. The wondrously compound 

 molecules of the tropics are evolved, oils, starches, sugars, spices, 

 ethers, and alkaloids magazines of stored-up vis viva and, by the 

 assimilation of these, physiological phenomena in sentient beings are 

 carried on, accompanied by the mysteries of will and consciousness, 

 and the still more unaccountable facts of succession and heredity, 

 which mock, if material, all efforts at conception or comprehension of 

 matter in its ultimate essence. 



The actual amount of energy stored up in the elementary molecule 

 is not calculable, but it must be enormous. The amount of motion 

 can not be certainly known, for we do not know whether any could 

 have disappeared at the birth, and the mass or atomic weight of the 

 ultimate particle can not be known by any means now in possession. 

 The great rapidity of oscillation across the small orbit has been viv- 

 idly illustrated by G. J. Stoney ("London, Edinburgh, and Dublin 

 Philosophical Magazine," August, 1868, page 132), by the considera- 

 tion (since numbers convey no idea) that they bear the same ratio of 



