THE BREATH OF LIFE 



water, we get atoms of hydrogen and oxygen gas; 

 if we divide a molecule of salt, we get atoms of 

 chlorine gas and atoms of the metal sodium, which 

 means that we have reached a point where matter 

 is no longer divisible in a mechanical sense, but only 

 in a chemical sense; which again means that great 

 and small, place and time, inside and outside, 

 dimensions and spatial relations, have lost their 

 ordinary meanings. Two bodies get inside of each 

 other. To the physicist, heat and motion are one; 

 light is only a mechanical vibration in the ether; 

 sound is only a vibration in the air, which the ear 

 interprets as sound. The world is as still as death 

 till the living ear comes to receive the vibrations in 

 the air; motion, or the energy which it implies, is the 

 life of the universe. 



Physics proves to us the impossibility of perpetual 

 motion among visible, tangible bodies, at the same 

 time that it reveals to us a world where perpetual 

 motion is the rule — the world of molecules and 

 atoms. In the world of gross matter, or of ponder- 

 able bodies, perpetual motion is impossible because 

 here it takes energy, or its equivalent, to beget 

 energy. Friction very soon turns the kinetic en- 

 ergy of motion into the potential energy of heat, 

 which quickly disappears in that great sea of energy, 

 the low uniform temperature of the earth. But 

 when we reach the interior world of matter, the 

 world of molecules, atoms, and electrons, we have 



190 



