IX 



THE JOURNEYING ATOMS 



EMERSON confessed in his "Journal" that he 

 could not read the physicists; their works did 

 not appeal to him. He was probably repelled by 

 their formulas and their mathematics. But add a 

 touch of chemistry, and he was interested. Chemis- 

 try leads up to life. He said he did not think he 

 would feel threatened or insulted if a chemist should 

 take his protoplasm, or mix his hydrogen, oxygen, 

 and carbon, and make an animalcule incontestably 

 swimming and jumping before his eyes. It would 

 be only evidence of a new degree of power over 

 matter which man had attained to. It would all 

 finally redound to the glory of matter itself, which, 

 it appears, "is impregnated with thought and 

 heaven, and is really of God, and not of the Devil, 

 as we had too hastily believed." This conception of 

 matter underlies the new materialism of such men 

 as Huxley and Tyndall. But there is much in the 

 new physics apart from its chemical aspects that 

 ought to appeal to the Emersonian type of mind. 

 Did not Emerson in his first poem, " The Sphinx," 

 sing of 



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