THE LIVING WAVE 



Some of the elements seem nearer life than others. 

 Water is near life; heat, light, the colloid state are 

 near life ; osmosis, oxidation, chemical reactions are 

 near life; the ashes of inorganic bodies are nearer life 

 than the same minerals in the rocks and soil; but 

 none of these things is life. 



The chemical mixture of some of the elements 

 gives us our high explosives — gunpowder, gun- 

 cotton, and the like; their organic mixture gives a 

 slower kind of explosive — bread, meat, milk, fruit, 

 which, when acted upon by the vital forces of the 

 body, yield the force that is the equivalent of the 

 work the body does. But to combine them in the 

 laboratory so as to produce the compounds out of 

 which the body can extract force is impossible. We 

 can make an unstable compound that will hurl a ton 

 of iron ten miles, but not one that when exploded 

 in the digestive tract of the human body will lift a 

 hair. 



We may follow life down to the ground, yes, un- 

 der the ground, into the very roots of matter and 

 motion, yea, beyond the roots, into the imaginary 

 world of molecules and atoms, and their attractions 

 and repulsions and not find its secret. Indeed, sci- 

 ence — the new science — pursues matter to the 

 vanishing-point, where it ceases to become matter 

 and becomes pure force or spirit. What takes place 

 in that imaginary world where ponderable matter 

 ends and becomes disembodied force, and where 



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