MOLECULES ARE MACHINES. 167 



That molecules are essentially different in the 

 number, groupings, and arrangements of their 

 atoms, constituting sixty-six kinds of machines, is 

 manifest by their various weights and magnitudes. 

 The lightest kind of molecule, hydrogen, has been 

 registered in tables of chemical equivalents at the 

 comparative starting point of i ; the next lightest, 

 carbon, 6 ; oxygen, 8 ; up to a molecule oigold, 1 96 ; 

 and lead, 207. 



Each kind of molecule has a different bulk or 

 volume, and each is a perfect machine with a 

 differing atomic structure. Each serves as an 

 electrode and current-changer, receiving, reflect- 

 ing, modifying, and changing the direction of the 

 electric vibrations and currents, continually trans- 

 mitted through the universal ether. 



These molecules, in turn, are electro-magnetically 

 formed into symmetrical angular crystals, and into 

 more than two hundred thousand species of mech- 

 anisms of plants and of animals. The molecules 

 incorporated into the mechanisms of plants serve 

 as food, to be re -incorporated into the mechanisms 

 of living animals, and to vitalize them. 



The electric ether being universally diffused, 

 and pervading freely all bodies, does not admit of 

 being weighed, as there seems to be no way of 

 producing an absolute electric vacuum. 



The relative weight of each of the sixty-six kinds 

 of elementary molecules is ascertained ; but the ab- 

 solute weight of each individual molecule is not as- 



