80 From Matter to Man. 



Gunpowder : — Potassium and hydrogen, with car- 

 bon, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulphur. 



Plants and animals also contain various proportions 

 of both metallics and non-metallics, the chief being 

 respectively, calcium, hydrogen, potassium, and sodium, 

 with carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulphur. 



Lastly, few of the elements are found in nature 

 uncombined with those of their opposite class ; while 

 the reduction of many of them, owing to their cleaving 

 so closely together (vanadium and oxygen, for in- 

 stance), is a work of great difficulty. 



This second law thus manifests a dual affinity as 

 distinctive of the least in the universe as of the 

 greatest. Beginning with atoms in their dual chemical 

 structure, it becomes in molecules complicated into a 

 sexual principle, which, increasing in intricacy through 

 the increasing complexity produced by the infinite 

 combinations of matter, at length pervades all natural 

 phenomena until it is eventually as essential to vegetal 

 and animal organisms as to the elements themselves. 

 It is the love of one class of atoms for the other — of 

 the males for the females — the origin of sex, and the 

 cause and foretaste of all love known, carnal and 

 platonic. Without it the atoms would be sterile, the 

 universe a chaos, and nature a eunuch. 



Section 3. Third law : Polarity : 



Definition : Like poles of magnets repel, ana unlike 

 poles attract each other. 

 No law, as we said of its parent form magnetism, 



