262 LIFE AND DEATH. 



I refer to precise and recent data, established by 

 the most expert investigators, and related by one of 

 them, Charles Edward Guillaume, some years ago, 

 before the Soa'tft^ helv^tique des Sciences naturellcs. 

 These data show that determinate forms of matter 

 may live and die, in the sense that they may be 

 slowly and continuously modified, always in the same 

 direction, until they have attained an ultimate and 

 definitive state of eternal repose. 



The Internal Movements of Bodies. — Swift's reply to 

 an idle fellow who spoke slightingly of work is well 

 known. " In England," said the author of Gulliver's 

 Travels, " men work, women work, horses work, 

 oxen work, water works, fire works, and beer works; 

 it is only the pig who does nothing at all; he must, 

 therefore, be the only gentleman in England." We 

 know very well that English gentlemen also work. 

 Indeed, everybody and everything works. And the 

 great wit was nearer right than he supposed in com- 

 paring men and things in this respect. Everything 

 is at work ; everything in nature strives and toils, at 

 every stage, in every degree. Immobility and repose 

 in the case of natural things are usually deceptive; 

 the seeming quietude of matter is caused by our 

 inability to appreciate its internal movements. Be- 

 cause of their minuteness we do not perceive the 

 swarming particles that compose it, and which, under 

 the impassible surface of the bodies, oscillate, displace 

 each other, move to and fro, and group themselves 

 into forms and positions adapted to the conditions 

 of the environment. In comparison with these 

 microscopic elements we are like Swift's giant among 

 the Lilliputians; and this is far from being a suffi- 

 ciently forcible comparison. 



