214 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



and feathers of a bird. The arrangements, the 

 collocations, the permutations and combinations of 

 these millions of atoms and molecules must be 

 infinite ; yet every single one must go to its right 

 place, for eventually every one is used, and rightly 

 used, and the very same atoms which made the 

 soft, structureless egg are now built up into a bird. 

 Were one to take every letter in Shakespeare's 

 works and jumble them together and shut them 

 into an eggshell, and were one to find that when 

 subjected to a gentle heat the letters arranged them- 

 selves into Plays and Sonnets, the result would not 

 be in the least more wonderful than the formation 

 of a chick. Consider what precise proportions of 

 the atoms must have been contained in the egg to 

 finish the finest tip of the finest feather. Consider 

 that there were in the original egg atoms of carbon, 

 and hydrogen, and oxygen, and nitrogen, and iron, 

 and calcium, and sulphur, and phosphorus, and 

 sodium, and potassium, and that all these had to 

 go to their places in new combinations, with no 

 more guidance than the heat from a hen's bosom. 

 Consider even the grosser complexity of a chick — 

 a complexity simple compared with the molecular 

 combinations — its veins, and arteries, and nerves, 

 and retinae, and ears, and bones — and how all of 

 these had to be accurately estimated and pre- 

 ordained in atoms. Consider these things, and we 



