THE BREATH OF LIFE 



to which is fraught with consequences as great 

 as the order in which the letters of the alphabet are 

 arranged in words, or the words themselves are 

 arranged in sentences. The change of one letter in 

 a word often utterly changes the meaning of that 

 word, and the changing of a word in the sentence 

 may give expression to an entirely different idea. 

 Reverse the letters in the word "God," and you 

 get the name of our faithful friend the dog. Huxley 

 and Tyndall both taught that it was the way that 

 the ultimate particles of matter are compounded 

 that makes the whole difference between a cabbage 

 and an oak, or between a frog and a man. It is a 

 hard proposition. We know with scientific certainty 

 that the difference between a diamond and a piece 

 of charcoal, or between a pearl and an oyster-shell, 

 is the way that the particles of carbon in the one 

 case, and of calcium carbide in the other, are ar- 

 ranged. We know with equal certainty that the 

 difference between certain chemical bodies, like 

 alcohol and ether, is the arrangement of their ulti- 

 mate particles, since both have the same chemical 

 formula. We do not spell acetic acid, alcohol, sugar, 

 starch, animal fat, vegetable oils, glycerine, and the 

 like, with the same letters; yet nature compounds 

 them all of the same atoms of carbon, hydrogen, 

 and oxygen, but in different proportions and in 

 different orders. 



Chemistry is all-potent. A mechanical mixture of 

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