THOUGHTS ON NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 53 



billiard table; some of their movements would 

 eventuate into groups. Repeat this as often as you 

 like, and if the forces are exactly alike in all 

 particulars, on each occasion you will get like results. 

 You must have definite temperatures to produce 

 definite chemical results, and with like forces you of 

 course get like results. It is possible that in some 

 cases other substances are in the act of formation, in 

 a fraction of time, amidst the war of the atoms ; but 

 the battling of the atoms breaks up those nascent 

 combinations before they can escape, and only those 

 combinations remain stable and escape to which it 

 is possible so to do under the given circumstances. 



The atoms having definite weights (the granules of 

 matter must have some weight, and according to 

 their number, or weight, in the atom so must be its 

 weight), the resulting combination must have definite 

 weights; and as you get like results under like circum- 

 stances, you get a like rule of combination weights. 



Returning to the strip of wood, it is evident that it 

 is the speed, weight, and movement of the atoms or 

 molecules, etc., that give to the substance its char- 

 acter that we term wood. If the atoms, etc., moved 

 at sufficient speed to unite with oxygen in combus- 

 tion, it would result in and be something that 

 certainly is not wood. They must move more 

 slowly than the oxygen to be wood. Their rate of 

 speed and arrangement makes them wood. 



The granules, corpuscles, atoms, and molecules are 

 continually moving, and at different speeds, through 

 space, and as a result of contact and the exercise of 

 force, and the action of the ether, are grouping 



