i68 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



chemical effects may be of a heat of 6000° C. or 

 so we do not know, further than that it would 

 cause a certain amount of corpuscular disintegra- 

 tion, and that some compounds, e.g, compounds of 

 nitrogen and oxygen, both constituents of living 

 tissues, are formed at very high temperatures. 



It is not difficult to regard heat as vis a tergo^ 

 and to believe that, at a certain stage in the 

 chemical combinations that took place pari passu 

 with the cooling of the molten mass of the world, 

 nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon leapt 

 together, according to the ordinary laws of chemical 

 affinity, into new combinations, with new far away 

 mechanical consequences. We see every day the 

 so-called dead atoms of our food put into new 

 partnerships in our hearts and livers, and perform- 

 ing there functions quite different from those they 

 performed in the meat and bread. 



The atoms, however, were not supplied by meat 

 or bread in the beginning, they were all in in- 

 organic form ; and it may be asked where the 

 atoms and molecules came from which went to the 

 making of protoplasm. There seems some reason 

 to believe that they were in solution in the warm 

 water of the circumpolar seas. 



It is an interesting and suggestive fact that the 

 salts in solution in the blood are almost identical 

 with the salts of sea- water. As long ago as 1802 



