CHEMICAL COMBINATION 37 



manufactory can be carried on, that the myriad opera- 

 tions and chemical changes in every department of 

 nature are in constant activity. The riches and com- 

 plexities of arrangement shown in this order proclaim 

 themselves with overwhelming power as due to mind. 



Chemical affinity is a persistent force. The atoms never 

 lose it, nor the qualities which it brings into play. No 

 changes, however multitudinous, exhaust or diminish 

 it. Atoms unite with atoms, and in union seem to lose 

 their identity, seem to forget themselves and all that 

 they were. They merge themselves in each other. 

 There is not the slightest sign of the individual element. 

 And thus united they might have communicated their 

 properties to each other irremovably. Seeing they 

 mingle them so perfectly, it might have been that in 

 combination they would lose them to each other, and 

 so there would have arisen inextricable confusion. But 

 when a combination is broken up, each element carries 

 with it everything belonging to itself and its kind, and 

 nothing more. No atom gives out of itself an infinitesimal 

 portion of what is properly its own. On whatever its 

 characteristics may depend, it suffers no measure of any 

 of them to be separated from it. It retains for ever 

 unaffected in any way its every affinity. This is a con- 

 tingency found in each atom, found in all the atoms. 



The compounds have various measures of stability. 

 In some it is weak ; in others it is strong. In the former 

 the range of conditions in which the union begins and 

 continues is narrow. In the latter it is exceedingly 

 wide. Phosphine PH 3 prepared in one way and intro- 

 duced into air or oxygen at once takes fire. Chlorine 

 peroxide C10 2 at a temperature below the boiling point 

 of water explodes with great violence. There are 

 compounds which the least elevation of temperature, 



