.V/A WILLIAM SIEMENS, I'.K.S. 187 



the results of combustion, the one of the metal calcium, and the 

 other of the metalloid carbon ; a combustion which must also 

 have been accomplished at an early period of the earth's history. 

 Other rocks we find to be the product of combustion of aluminium, 

 magnesium, silicon, and other chemical elements ; and only com- 

 paratively rare substances, such as gold, platinum, and copper, 

 besides native sulphur and pyrites, may still be looked upon as 

 stores of potential energy. Excepting these, and the important 

 deposits of coal, the earth may indeed be likened to a ball of 

 cinder, whose energy has long been spent and dissipated into 

 space, and which is dependent for its supply of energy upon 

 external sources. Without such external supply, the water upon 

 its surface would be turned into solid ice, its animal and vegetable 

 kingdom must soon come to an end, rain must cease to fall, and 

 the very winds must cease to blow. It is not now difficult to. 

 conceive whence the all-vivifying energy to which we owe our 

 existence is derived ; it is from our great luminary the Sun. 



It has been justly remarked that poetic vision sometimes goes 

 beyond the conception of the sober mind, and there never, per- 

 haps, lived a poet who was more remarkable for such distant vision 

 than Goethe, who, in his famous tragedy of " Faust," has accumu- 

 lated an almost inexhaustible store for thoughtful meditation. 

 Faust, in his eagerness for knowledge, conjures up into his presence 

 a spirit, which reveals itself to him as the Spirit of the Earth in 

 the following remarkable words, according to the translation of 

 Mr. Theodore Martin : 



" In the currents of life, in action's storm, 

 I wander and I wave ; 

 Everywhere I be ! 

 Birth and the grave, 

 An infinite sea ; 

 A web ever growing, 

 A life ever glowing. 

 Thus at Time's whizzing loom I spin, 

 And weave the living vesture that God is mantled in." 



Surely Goethe was free from vulgar superstition, and must have 

 conceived that his Spirit of the Earth represented an entity 

 capable of precise definition, whenever science had sufficiently 

 advanced to render such a definition possible. Such an advance 

 has since been made, and Goethe's Spirit of the Earth presents 



