Com] AND SYMBOLS. 55 



Combination and Re-combination : Principles of 



Nature. 



It is noticeable that, in human society, individuals rarely 

 have any independent action. Men combine into sects and 

 parties, or cliques or partnerships, dissolve their associations and 

 recombine again, in order to carry on the affairs of the world. 

 Isolated action is seldom seen. It is remarkable of the simple 

 substances that they also are generally in some compound form. 

 Thus oxygen and nitrogen, though in mixture they form the 

 aerial envelope of the globe, are never found separate in Nature. 

 Carbon is pure only in the diamond. And the metallic bases 

 of the earths, though the chemist can disengage them, may well 

 be supposed unlikely to remain long uncombined, seeing that 

 contact with moisture makes them burn. Combination and re- 

 combination are principles largely pervading Nature. There 

 are few rocks, for example, that are not composed of at least 

 two varieties of matter, each of which is again a compound of 

 elementary substances. What is still more wonderful with re- 

 spect to this principle of combination is that all the elementary 

 substances observe certain mathematical proportions in their 

 unions. When in the gaseous state, one volume of them unites 

 with one, two, three, or more volumes of another, any extra 

 quantity being sure to be left over, if such there should be. 

 Combinations by weight are also governed by fixed and un- 

 changing laws of the greatest beauty and simplicity. It is 

 hence supposed by some that matter is composed of infinitely 

 minute particles or atoms, each of which, belonging to any one 

 substance, can only (through the operation of some as yet hidden 

 law) associate with a certain number of the atoms of any other. 

 There are also strange predilections amongst substances for each 

 other's company. One will remain combined in solution with 

 another, until a third is added, when it will abandon the former 

 and attach itself to the latter. A fourth being added, the third 

 will perhaps leave the first and join the new-comer. The extent 

 to which this law of combination operates in human society, 

 and has operated since the beginning of the world, is obvious. 



VE. 



