AND ITS SELF-COKSERVATION". 185 



attraction and repulsion. We have just seen that crys- 

 tallization depends upon a definite fixed relation between 

 these two modes of energy for each particular substance; 

 and in former pages reasons were shown for concluding 

 that the chemical elements themselves must have had 

 their origin in the cumulative strain incident to the 

 gradual radiation of heat from a given diffuse, gaseous 

 mass, the mass gradually condensing into the solid state 

 through the constant action of gravity; this phase of 

 force itself, indeed, becoming more and more intense 

 the farther the condensation advanced. 



Modern chemistry itself points definitely and em- 

 phatically in the same direction. All chemical com- 

 pounds are separable into their elements through the 

 action of heat. Chemical combination is the result 

 of attraction, here named "affinity/- while heat is 

 a mode of repulsion. Above a certain degree of in- 

 tensity, therefore, heat must serve as an absolute 

 bar to the formation of any known chemical com- 

 pound. 



As far as observation goes, then, the qualitative differ- 

 ences of matter are -seen to be completely dependent 

 upon the relation between the intensive and the exten- 

 sive phases of energy in a given realm. Quality is, in 

 truth, the intensive phase of matter developed through a 

 preponderance of the intensive phase of energy. That 

 is, it is a perfectly logical inference from the principle 

 thus far developed that the so-called chemical elements 

 are themselves simply so many phases of matter that 

 have been differentiated from a practically homogeneous, 

 nebulous mass, through the gradual transition of the 

 total quantity of energy immediately constituting that 



