io6 THE CREATION OF MATTER 



enabled to rise to the heights of vital activity. Is it not 

 clear, therefore, that oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen 

 have been made, and their properties adapted for those 

 of carbon ? 



On the other hand, if the life-yielding potencies be 

 divided among two or three, or equally among the four, 

 elements, and all have equally important parts to play, 

 the division among the greater number of elements or 

 kinds of atoms, the distribution among them of exactly 

 the same amount of potency, or proportion, or kind of 

 potency, required a nicety of discrimination only to be 

 found in an understanding and perceiving nature of 

 inconceivable power, required a greater intelligence than 

 even the concentration of them in one of the kinds. 



A certain temperature is also necessary to the existence 

 of life. There are forms which can sustain very low 

 temperatures, which can bear the cold of the Arctic 

 regions; there are algae which have been found in hot 

 springs of a high temperature. Life is for the most part 

 possible within very narrow limits of heat and cold. 

 Heat in the molecules is a form of motion. Had there 

 been no such motions, life would not have been ; had the 

 motions been all and always beyond a certain number 

 and they might have been far beyond it life would have 

 been impossible. Its existence on the earth, therefore, 

 depends on the number of heat motions being executed 

 by the molecules of matter. These must not go above 

 a certain amount; they must not go below a certain 

 amount. The limits are comparatively narrow; their 

 heat depends on their relationship to the ether, on the 

 energy they receive from it, and through it from the sun. 

 It is not enough, in order to obtain the least globule of 

 protoplasm, to have a sufficiency of atoms specially 

 ordered for its formation. There must be sufficient to 



