132 THE INSUFFICIEKCY OF PHYSICAL LAW. 



gravitation was acting all the time. It is always thus : 

 the falling body and the body lying on the ground each 

 obeys the law equally well. 



If I pull a bar of steel wirh force enough to draw it 

 apart I do not violate the law of cohesion. I remove the 

 parts beyond its influence, and it is a part of the law that 

 in such a case the cohesion becomes infinitely small. 



Nor can I in any way do violence to any law of chem- 

 istry. Bodies will unite in certain definite proportions, 

 or multiples thereof, and I may do what I will, and 

 waste as much material as I please, the result is un- 

 changeable ; if the bodies unite at all, it will be in exact 

 accordance with their own laws. And what is true of 

 these is true of all physical laws. To break any one of 

 them is impossible. 



Another characteristic of physical laws is that each 

 law moves on in a straight line to its goal. It turns 

 neither to the right nor to the left. The law of gravita- 

 tion has but one mission, to bring every particle of mat- 

 ter as near as possible to the centre of the earth, and 

 every particle in the solar system to the sun, and finally 

 every atom everywhere as near as possible to the centre 

 of the universe. The law of chemical action has but one 

 final goal towards which it is pushing, the destruction 

 of unstable compounds and forming, in their place, others 

 of greater stability. The laws of cohesion make no bet- 

 terments but tend to hold all things as they are. Electric- 

 ity, the child of motion, itself would cease when matter 

 came to rest. Heat and light are ever striving to pass off 

 into that infinite space that surrounds all things. 



Under the unrestrained influence of these forces, our 

 earth would become as the moon is now. In it is neither 

 atmosphere nor water. Life there is impossible. Silence 

 forever reigns. Intense cold alternates with great heat. 

 Its axial rotation has become so slow that it takes a 

 month for a revolution. It is in the last stage of its sep- 



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