404 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 
Instead of cutting our grain of corn into slices and sub- 
jecting it to the action of polarized light, let us place it in 
the earth, and subject it to a certain degree of warmth. In 
other words, let the molecules, both of the corn and of the 
surrounding earth, be kept in that state of agitation which 
we call heat. Under these circumstances, the grain and 
the substances which surround it interact, and a definite 
molecular architecture is the result. A bud is formed; 
this bud reaches the surface, where it is exposed to the 
sun's rays, which are also to be regarded as a kind of 
vibratory motion. And as the motion of common heat, 
with which the grain and the substances surrounding it 
were first endowed, enabled the grain and these substances 
to exercise their mutual attractions and repulsions, and 
thus to coalesce in definite forms, so the specific motion of 
the sun's rays now enables the green bud to feed upon the 
carbonic acid and the aqueous vapor of the air. The bud 
appropriates those constituents of both for which it has 
an elective attraction, and permits the other constituent 
to return to the atmosphere. Thus the architecture is 
carried on. Forces are active at the root, forces are active 
in the blade, the matter of the air and the matter of the 
atmosphere are drawn upon, and the plant augments in 
size. We have in succession the stalk, the ear, the full corn 
in the ear; the cycle of molecular action being completed 
by the production of grains, similar to that with which the 
process began. 
Now there is nothing in this process which necessarily 
eludes the conceptive or imagining power of the human 
mind. An intellect the same in kind as our own would, if 
only sufficiently expanded, be able to follow the whole 
process from beginning to end. It would see every mole- 
cule placed in its position by the specific attractions and 
repulsions exerted between it and other molecules, the 
whole process, and its consummation, being an instance of 
the play of molecular force. Given the grain and its en- 
vironment, with their respective forces, the purely human 
intellect might, if sufficiently expanded, trace out a priori 
every step of the process of growth, and, by the application 
of purely mechanical principles, demonstrate that the cycle 
must end, as it is seen to end, in the reproduction of forms 
like that with which it began. A necessity rules here, 
similar to that which rules the planets in their circuits 
round the sun. 
