404 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



Instead of cutting our grain of corn into slices and sub- 

 jecting it to the action of polarized light, let us place it in 

 the earth, and subject it to a certain degree of warmth. In 

 other words, let the molecules, both of the corn and of the 

 surrounding earth, be kept in that state of agitation which 

 we call heat. Under these circumstances, the grain and 

 the substances which surround it interact, and a definite 

 molecular architecture is the result. A bud is formed; 

 this bud reaches the surface, where it is exposed to the 

 sun's rays, which are also to be regarded as a kind of 

 vibratory motion. And as the motion of common heat, 

 with which the grain and the substances surrounding it 

 were first endowed, enabled the grain and these substances 

 to exercise their mutual attractions and repulsions, and 

 thus to coalesce in definite forms, so the specific motion of 

 the sun's rays now enables the green bud to feed upon the 

 carbonic acid and the aqueous vapor of the air. The bud 

 appropriates those constituents of both for which it has 

 an elective attraction, and permits the other constituent 

 to return to the atmosphere. Thus the architecture is 

 carried on. Forces are active at the root, forces are active 

 in the blade, the matter of the air and the matter of the 

 atmosphere are drawn upon, and the plant augments in 

 size. We have in succession the stalk, the ear, the full corn 

 in the ear; the cycle of molecular action being completed 

 by the production of grains, similar to that with which the 

 process began. 



Now there is nothing in this process which necessarily 

 eludes the conceptive or imagining power of the human 

 mind. An intellect the same in kind as our own would, if 

 only sufficiently expanded, be able to follow the- whole 

 process from beginning to end. It would see every mole- 

 cule placed in its position by the specific attractions and 

 repulsions exerted between it and other molecules, the 

 whole process, and its consummation, being an instance of 

 the play of molecular force. Given the grain and its en- 

 vironment, with their respective forces, the purely human 

 intellect might, if sufficiently expanded, trace out* priori 

 every step of the process of growth, and, by the application 

 of purely mechanical principles, demonstrate that the cycle 

 must end, as it is seen to end, in the reproduction of forms 

 like that with which it began. A necessity rules here, 

 similar to that which rules the planets in their circuits 

 round the sun. 



