NEW CONCEPTIONS IN SCIENCE 



From the coldest cold to the in tensest heat, then, 

 is about 6300 centigrade degrees. The diagram 

 on the page preceding shows where we live in such 

 a scale. 



So dominant a factor is heat in the universe, as 

 we know it, that not merely life, but all physical 

 phenomena, might be described as a heat reaction. 

 It is heat which determines the point at which 

 all chemical change shall take place, and therefore 

 the whole march of life as well. It is heat, and 

 heat alone, which converts the acorn into the oak, 

 the inert egg into the chicken, that turns the 

 barren earth to living green in the spring, that 

 stirs the lifeless air to breeze or tempest, that 

 lifts the surface of the water into the sky, and 

 brings cloud and rain to the earth it has parched. 

 It is merely failing heat that turns the woods to 

 November brown and drear December ; change and 

 seasons are its work. 



Could we exist in extreme cold or extreme heat, 

 it would seem to us as if our familiar world had 

 been turned upside down. In the regions of cold- 

 est cold, all chemical action would cease; dyna- 

 mite could scarce by any power be made to ex- 

 plode ; sulphuric acid, if it had not long before been 

 frozen solid, would be mild as water; we might 

 wash our hands in it ; the vitriol-throwers would be 

 without weapons. Long before this, as we descend- 



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