128 THE CREATION OF MATTER 



the atoms the potencies necessary to the production of 

 the results. If we thus endow material elements, if 

 there be in them such characteristics as enable them to 

 rise to the height of yielding perceiving natures, we 

 enrich them with riches above what is seen in them in 

 any or all of the sciences. To what then do they owe 

 the possession of qualities so high ? How did it happen 

 that all carbon atoms, those also of hydrogen, oxygen, 

 and nitrogen existed, having each their own kind of 

 potency, which enabled them to develop, by combination 

 and organisation, powers so exalted 1 ? It would be a 

 phenomenon the strangest if two independent suitable 

 entities chanced to exist from eternity in a condition and 

 so adjusted to each other, as that coming together they 

 should yield one perceiving nature. It would be still 

 stranger if a number of independent atoms were found 

 capable of so high a development. It would make 

 manifest in each such qualities and adaptations, that we 

 could not believe in them as so existing by chance. But 

 there are four different kinds of atoms, and there are of 

 each kind numbers to which the drops of all the seas are 

 but as fewness itself. And one and all of each kind have 

 something which, when they are united in a peculiarly 

 complex chemical union, and built up into the supreme 

 organisation, yield, in some mode of united action, the 

 perceiving nature. Every atom of carbon, hydrogen, 

 oxygen, and nitrogen, if on the earth or in the sun and 

 stars, has its potency capable of contributing to the result. 

 These potencies are of a very lofty and special nature. 

 Here lovelier beams than its diamond crystal knows, 

 spring from carbon. Here in a combination and organisa- 

 tion of this and its colleague elements, it is as if a 

 nightingale's note or grand symphony were to proceed 

 from a clod of the valley. The same specialty dis- 



