CHAPTER IV 



Combustion 



If we throw a shovelful of coal into a stove, 

 the coal catches fire, reddens, throws out 

 heat and is consumed. Nothing is left but a 

 handful of ashes — insignificant compared with 

 its original weight. What has become ol the 

 coal ? It is not annihilated ; for nothing in 

 this world can be annihilated. Just try to 

 annihilate a grain of sand. You may crush it, 

 pulverise it, but you will never reduce it to 

 nothing. And the cleverest men, with means 

 at their disposal more various and powerful 

 than ours, would be equally incapable. In 

 spite of every effort the grain of sand will still 

 exist, in some fashion or other. Nothing and 

 chance, the two big words that we employ on 

 every occasion, are really quite meaningless. 

 Everything obeys laws ; everything is in- 

 destructible. 



The coal when consumed is not annihilated 

 at all. It no longer exists in the stove in 



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