322 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



brigade dances, and the brigade dances are but part of the 

 great dance of the whole army corps, which, taken as a 

 whole, is the biont. The illustration is not quite exact, for 

 each company must not be considered as consisting of like 

 individuals, but of many individuals of all arms, some like 

 and some unlike, linked in such various ways that no two 

 companies are the same, partly because of the proportions of 

 different kinds of individuals composing them, partly because 

 of the way in which those individuals are linked together. 

 Nor must we imagine that individuals are permanently 

 attached to companies, nor yet companies to regiments, but 

 that in the course of the dance individuals are passed from 

 company to company, and companies from regiment to 

 regiment, each conforming temporarily to the particular 

 figure of that part of the dance to which he or it for the 

 time belongs. Further than this the individuals engaged 

 in the whole dance are never lone the same : there are 

 bystanders who for a time do not participate in the dance 

 but are caught up one by one, whirled through the figures, 

 passed from company to company, from regiment to regi- 

 ment and brigade to brigade, and are eventually passed out 

 of the dance again, after having participated in some or all 

 of the figures as the case may be. Every individual in the 

 dance is at some time passed out of the dance, becomes 

 a bystander, and may again be caught up and whirled along 

 in the dance once more. 



The illustration is farfciful, if you please, but it is of the 

 same kind as illustrations used to depict the play of mole- 

 cular forces in the inorganic world. It serves a purpose in 

 that it gives the imagination something to work upon, and 

 it enables one to conceive of the immense complexity which 

 is possible in a chemico-physical process. The army dance 

 which I describe is capable of any number of combinations, 

 a number amply sufficient to satisfy the needs of those who 

 insist so strongly on the marvellous complexity of life. 

 Let anybody imagine an army to be composed of four 

 brigades, each brigade of four regiments, each regiment of 

 ten companies, and each company to contain 100 indi- 

 viduals of the eight kinds, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, 



