THE JOURNEYING ATOMS 



keeping. Whether an object is hot or cold to our 

 senses, depends upon the character of their vibra- 

 tions; whether it be sweet or sour, poisonous or 

 innocuous to us, depends upon how the atoms select 

 their partners in the whirl and dance of their activi- 

 ties. The hardness and brilliancy of the diamond is 

 supposed to depend upon how the atoms of carbon 

 unite and join hands. 



I have heard the view expressed that all matter, 

 as such, is dead matter, that the molecules of hy- 

 drogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, iron, phosphorus, 

 calcium, and so on, in a living body, are themselves 

 no more alive than the same molecules in inorganic 

 matter. Nearly nine tenths of a living body is 

 water; is not this water the same as the water we 

 get at the spring or the brook? is it any more alive? 

 does water undergo any chemical change in the 

 body? is it anything more than a solvent, than a 

 current that carries the other elements to all parts 

 of the body? There are any number of chemical 

 changes or reactions in a living body, but are the 

 atoms and molecules that are involved in such 

 changes radically changed? Can oxygen be any- 

 thing but oxygen, or carbon anything but carbon? 

 Is what we call life the result of their various new 

 combinations? Many modern biologists hold to 

 this view. In this conception merely a change in 

 the order of arrangement of the molecules of a sub- 

 stance — which follows which or which is joined 



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