MATTER AND LIFE FROM WITHIN 7Q 



distinguished for their variety of linkages, play 

 the most essential part in organised matter. 

 The albuminous colloids, whose composition has 

 hitherto defied definition, consist of some 53 parts 

 of carbon, 16 parts of nitrogen, 20 of oxygen, 7 of 

 hydrogen, and 1 of sulphur. A single molecule 

 of any definite substance made up out of these 

 would be lost in the welter of nebulous and dis- 

 aggregated matter, and could not be detected by 

 our analyses. A living cell from within would 

 therefore appear like an utterly unsystematic con- 

 geries of atoms, molecules, and ruins of molecules 

 more or less complex. The atoms, or infra-suns, 

 would be of six or seven different types, and none 

 of them exceptionally large. A human brain cell 

 would perhaps be the most chaotic of all, the 

 atoms undergoing a rapid series of groupings and 

 rearrangements, every such grouping being the 

 physical symbol and counterpart of a conscious or 

 subconscious thought. 



This brings us to some problems of existence 

 which have long been very obscure, but which 

 appear less so when regarded in the light of t lu- 

 lu tra- world. We have, in all our investigations, 

 found no point at which a final continuity and 

 unity can be demonstrated. Everything is divi- 

 sible, infinitely divisible, and, liwtj\<T deeply we 

 descend in the scale of magnitude, the whirl of 

 atoms and the drift of suns remains tho same. 



