76 From Matter to Man. 



molten gold into invisible vapour, in which condition 

 the gold atoms are as free or disconnected as their 

 gaseous constitution will permit. 



We thus learn that atoms in solid combination grip 

 tenaciously together, and yield up their cohesive force 

 only to intense heat or motion. The question conse- 

 quently is — What constitutes this cohesion ? And 

 the answer is, Atomic affinity, or a mutually selective 

 attraction persisting between like elementary atoms, 

 constituting what we have called Like - Material- 

 Attraction. Further, as similar effects characterise 

 mixed elementary substances in their cohesion (such 

 as ice, sugar, salt, and alum) molecular affinity, or a 

 mutual attraction between like molecules or particles 

 of compound substance, also prevails in nature; hence, 

 in simple, as in compound substances, the same law 

 governs — Like-material-attraction. 



The importance and necessity of this law are 

 obvious, for without it neither gold, silver, nor any 

 other definite substance could cohere; the earth would 

 only be a conglomerate of indistinguishable elements. 



In the tumult of laws governing all sorts of bodies, 

 and accomplishing all sorts of purposes, the agent 

 effecting this mutual attraction of like matter seems 

 to have been ignored ; while the phenomenon itself 

 appears from its universality to have escaped observa- 

 tion. If any scientist's attention was arrested by it, 

 his curiosity was probably allayed by quoting to him- 

 self the law of gravitation. But gravitation, as now 

 understood, is virtually a law of indiscriminate attrac- 



