INORGANIC EVOLUTION 11 



bearing a close resemblance to the prior form. What 

 does this mean? That these atoms are not inert, and 

 unintelligent. They are always active and carry with 

 them, in making new forms, the memory of former 

 combinations, just as surely as the bee uses the memory 

 of inherited instinct, in the making of comb honey. 

 These atoms not only have memory, they have also 

 reason. Reason anticipates the future as if it were 

 present ; and the combination of atoms of matter in 

 building from the homogeneity of the nebula, the 

 heterogeneity of stellar globes, exhibits the same 

 memory, and reason, that a builder of a house does in 

 constructing from raw materials a many roomed and 

 useful dwelling. For, it is more than probable that 

 every nebula has before been in the solid form. When 

 these atoms come together in the plastic forms of 

 organic matter through the intermediate adaptability 

 of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon, there re- 

 sults, a higher degree only, of this same reason and 

 memory, in a form we call life. When, by a little 

 added phosphorus and sulphur, nerve matter is formed, 

 there results a still higher degree of mobility, which 

 we call psychic. But, at every step, it is always the 

 same atom that does the work, which we find in the 

 nebula, the globe, and the organic form; and every- 

 where it is found, it is active, intelligent, doing that 

 which appears to us as just the proper thing to do in 

 carrying on its multiplicity of effects throughout 

 nature. This is materialistic monism. The reason of 

 man constructs from the known, the unknown; and 

 the atom, in its tendency to condense, builds from the 

 known, which is its own form, the unknown crystal, 

 globe, cell, and organism. The atom is truer in its 

 certainty, and ultimate achievement, than the reason 



