MATTER AND FORCE. 395 
ject is that of the poet, who, when asked whence came the 
rliodora, joyfully acknowledged his brotherhood with the 
flower: 
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose! 
I never thought to ask, I never knew, 
But in my simple ignorance supposed 
The selfsame power that brought me there brought you.* 
A few exceptions to the general state of union of the 
molecules of the earth's crust vast in relation to us, but 
trivial in comparison to the total store of whicli they are the 
residue still remain. They constitute our main sources 
of motive power. By far the most important of these 
are our beds of coal. Distance still intervenes between 
the atoms of carbon and those of atmospheric oxygen, 
across which the atoms may be urged by their mutual 
attractions: and we can utilize the motion thus produced. 
Once the carbon and the oxygen have rushed together, so 
as to form carbonic acid, their mutual attractions are satis- 
fied; and, while they continue in this condition, as dynamic 
agents they are dead. Our woods and forests are also 
sources of mechanical energy, because they have the power of 
uniting with the atmospheric oxygen. Passing from plants 
to animals, we find that the source of motive power just 
referred to is also the source of muscular power. A horse 
can perform work, and so can a man; but this work is at 
bottom the molecular work of the transmuted food and 
the oxygen of the air. We inhale this vital gas, and bring 
it into sufficiently close proximity with the carbon and the 
hydrogen of the body. These unite in obedience to their 
mutual attractions; and their motion toward each other, 
properly turned to account by the wonderful mechanism of 
the body, becomes muscular motion. 
One fundamental thought pervades all these statements: 
there is one tap root from which they all spring. This is 
the ancient maxim that out of nothing nothing comes; 
that neither in the organic world nor in the inorganic is 
power produced without the expenditure of power; that 
neither in the plant nor in the animal is there a creation of 
force or motion. Trees grow, and so do men and horses; 
and here we have new power incessantly introduced upon 
the earth. But its source, as I have already stated, is the 
* Emerson. 
