Matter. 59 



The consequences of the limitations involved by 

 these automatic laws, as well as their necessity, are 

 obvious. Without a fixed proportional combination 

 of elements, chaos would be the normal condition of 

 things and order the exception; hence in the very 

 nature of being, in the fact of existence at all, and in 

 the constitution of the atoms as elements, system 

 in natural production, as in human language, is 

 absolutely essential to the prevention of universal 

 babel. 



The law of the combining weights is also a 

 rudimentary factor in the great evolutionary law of 

 natural selection. Innumerable elements, for instance, 

 may often meet in suitable conditions for combination, 

 but, if unsuitable in proportion, no selection ensues, 

 consequently there is no production ; creation is 

 virtually dead. In this restriction lurks not only a 

 barrier to chaos, but a check to the indiscriminate 

 and ceaseless germination of monstrosities. Further, 

 we obtain a deeper insight into the great fact of 

 material genesis — viz., that the universe is composed 

 of atoms, omnipotent automata, built together of 

 laws, self-going machines, infallible, indestructible 

 and eternal ; while the combinations of these atoms 

 are not ephemeral lumps of clay, cut here and there 

 and fashioned indiscriminately at the caprice of a 

 Supernatural Potter, but similar automata, chance 

 born and chance sustained, here to-day and gone to- 

 morrow. 



These two facts — the dual classification of the 



