78 THE WORLD-ENERGY 



really compounds, the compounds must have been formed 

 at a very high temperature. It is easy to imagine that 

 there may be no superior limit to temperature, and there- 

 fore no superior limit beyond which such combinations 

 are impossible. Because the atoms which have the power 

 of combining together at these transcendental stages of 

 heat do not exist as such, or rather, they exist combined 

 with other similar atoms, at lower temperatures. Hence 

 association will be a combination of more complex 

 molecules as temperature is reduced, and of dissociation, 

 therefore, with increased temperature there may be no 

 end." 



To this conclusion, indeed, the facts brought to light 

 by means of the spectroscope clearly point, and thus, as 

 already remarked, offer a strong confirmation of the argu- 

 ment we have presented above in abstract form, showing 

 that increased complexity of " matter" must necessarily 

 result from increase of condensation, involving, as that 

 necessarily does, increased complexity of concrete relations 

 in the mass; while, on the other hand, this complexity 

 must grow less and less with the diffusion of matter into 

 wider space. 



We can but conclude, then, that matter is not only 

 constituted by and of force, and that it is thus ultimately 

 (at least in a relative sense) homogeneous, but also that 

 the seeming complexity of matter that is, the multi- 

 plicity of " elements " is in reality but the increasingly 

 complex grouping of and multiplied tension between the 

 indefinitely extended dynamical spheres which constitute 

 the initial phase of the development or manifestation of 

 force the added complexity of grouping and increased 

 intensity of relation being due to the steadily accumulating 



