ON THE INTERACTION OF NATURAL FORCES. 165 



lated in plants ; and -we can assume it as very probable, that the 

 former is the cause of the latter. I must indeed remark, that 

 we are in possession of no experiments from which we might 

 determine whether the vis viva of the sun's rays which have 

 disappeared corresponds to the chemical forces accumulated 

 during the same time ; and as long as these experiments are 

 wanting, we cannot regard the stated relation as a certainty. 

 If this view should prove correct, we derive from it the natter- 

 ing result, that all force, by means of which our bodies live and 

 move, finds its source in the purest sunlight; and hence we 

 are all, in point of nobility, not behind the race of the great 

 monarch of China, who heretofore alone called himself Son of 

 the Sun. But it must also be conceded that our lower fellow- 

 beings, the frog and leech, share the same ethereal origin, as 

 also the whole vegetable world, and even the fuel which comes 

 to us from the ages past, as well as the youngest offspring of 

 the forest with which we heat our stoves and set our machines 

 in motion. 



You see, then, that the immense wealth of ever-changing 

 meteorological, climatic, geological, and organic processes of our 

 earth are almost wholly preserved in action by the light- and 

 heat-giving rays of the sun ; and you see in this a remarkable 

 example, how Proteus-like the effects of a single cause, under 

 altered external conditions, may exhibit itself in nature. Besides 

 these, the earth experiences an action of another kind from its 

 central luminary, as well as from its satellite the moon, which 

 exhibits itself in the remarkable phenomenon of the ebb and 

 flow of the tide. 



Each of these bodies excites, by its attraction upon the 

 waters of the sea, two gigantic waves, which flow in the same 

 direction round the world, as the attracting bodies themselves 

 apparently do. The two waves of the moon, on account of her 

 greater nearness, are about 31 times as large as those excited 

 by the sun. One of these waves has its crest on the quarter of 

 the earth's surface which is turned towards the moon, the other 

 is at the opposite side. Both these quarters possess the flow 

 of the tide, while the regions which lie between have the ebb. 



