COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



time that it has a great degree of concentration." 

 Let us enumerate the several ways in which 

 organic bodies are enabled to retain vast quan- 

 tities of molecular motion, without losing their 

 high degree of concentration. The facts to be 

 contemplated are among the most beautiful and 

 striking facts which the patient interrogation of 

 nature has ever elicited. 



In the, first place, while one of the four chief 

 components of organic matter is carbon, a solid 

 substance which cannot be fused by the greatest 

 heat that man can produce, the other chief com- 

 ponents — oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen — 

 are gases which human art is unable to liquefy. 1 

 At a temperature of more than 200 degrees 

 below the zero of Fahrenheit, and under a pres- 

 sure so enormous as to shorten the steel piston 

 employed, oxygen remains gaseous ; and hydro- 

 gen and nitrogen display a like obstinate mo- 

 lecular mobility. Now, of these four substances, 

 carbon has the most highly compounded mole- 

 cule. In chemical language, the molecule of 

 carbon is tetratomic, while that of nitrogen is 

 triatomic, that of oxygen is diatomic, and that 

 of hydrogen is monatomic. That is to say, a 

 single molecule of carbon will hold in combina- 



1 [The later success of liquefaction in these cases has be- 

 come within a short time a well-known fact of popular science. 

 Fiske's text here was of course accurate at the time of writ-' 



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