142 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



noticed how frequently I quote Mr. Emerson. I do so mainly be- 

 cause in him we have a poet and a profoundly religious man, who is 

 really and entii-ely undaunted by the discoveries of science, past, 

 present, or prospective. In his case Poetry, with the joy of a bac- 

 chanal, takes her graver brother Science by the hand, and cheers him 

 with immortal laughter. By Emerson scientific conceptions are con- 

 tinually transmuted into the finer forms and warmer hues of an ideal 

 world. Our present theme is touched ujion in the lines 



"The journeying atoms, primordial wholes 

 Firmly draw, firmly drive by their animate poles." 



As regards veracity and insight these few words outweigh, in my 

 estimation, all the formal learning expended l)y Mr. Martineau in 

 these disquisitions on force, in which he treats the physicist as a con- 

 jurer, and spealvS so wittily of atomic polarity. In fact, without this 

 notion of polarity this "drawing" and "driving" this attraction 

 and rejiulsion, we stand as stupidly dumb before the phenomena of 

 crystallization as a Bushman before the phenomena of the solar sys- 

 tem. The genesis and growth of the notion I have endeavored to 

 Inake clear in my third lecture on " Light," and in the article " Crystals 

 and Molecular Force," published in this volume. 



Our future course is here foreshadowed. A Sunday or two ago I 

 stood under an oak planted by Sir John Moore, the hero of Corunna. 

 On the ground near the tree little oaklets were successfully fighting 

 for life with the surrounding vegetation. The acorns had dropped 

 into the friendly soil, and this Avas the result of their interaction. 

 What is the acorn ? what the earth ? and what the sun, without 

 whose heat and light the tree could not become a tree, however rich 

 the soil, and however healthj'^ the seed ? I answer for myself as be- 

 fore all " matter." And the heat and light which here play so potent 

 a part are acknowledged to be motions of matter. By taking some- 

 thing much lower down in the vegetable kingdom than the oak, we 

 might approach mvich more nearly to the case of crystallization already 

 discussed, but this is not now necessary. 



If, instead of conceding the sufficiency of matter here, Mr. Mar- 

 tineau should fly to the hypothesis of a vegetative soul, all the ques- 

 tions before asked in relation to the snow-star become pertinent. I 

 would invite him to go over them one by one, and consider what re- 

 plies he will make to them. He may retort by asking me " Who 

 infused the principle of life into the tree ? " I say in answer that our 

 present question is not this, but another not who made the tree, but 

 what is it ? Is there any thing besides matter in the tree ? If so, 

 what, and where ? Mr. Martineau may have begun by this time to 

 discern that it is not " picturesqueness," but cold precision, that my 

 Vorstellungs-iahigkeit demands. How, I would ask, is this vegeta- 

 tive soul to be presented to the mind ; where did it flourish before 



