32 INTERPRETATIONS OF NATURE. 
it? Is it really a Simple element? Or will science yet 
declare that this primal monad of chemistry is, after all, 
a compound? There are such indications. And is it 
really of the nature of a metal—as Graham would have 
us believe? The indications all lead towards that con- 
clusion. It must be confessed that absolutely we know 
nothing whatever of its real nature. 
And so it isin reference to force. We talk glibly of 
adhesion, cohesion, gravity, heat, light, magnetism, 
electricity, chemical affinity, and the like; but we know 
no more about them than we do of the correlation of 
thought and brain-matter. We look up at the moon 
and teli the child that the strong arm of a force that we 
call gravity holds that satellite a-spinning around the 
earth. But who of us has any adequate conception of 
the greatness of that force?’ Round Top, the highest 
peak of the Catskill mountains, rises three thousand 
eight hundred four feet above the level of the sea. 
Lay along the side of the range a bar of steel one mile 
square. The upper surface of that steel bar will be one 
thousand four hundred seventy-six feet above the 
highest point of Round Top. Does that mile-square bar 
of steel represent the force which is needed to hold 
earth and moon together? No; it takes, not onesuch 
bar, nor one hundred such bars of steel, but eightv- 
seven thousand ? 
Let us say then that ‘‘in the beginning’’ there were 
only these two mysteries, matter and force. Let us go 
back into the early history of this globe. How strangely 
well for our comfort and highest well-being these 
strata of the earth’s crust were laid,—happened to be 
laid. Then, as the conditions became favorable, there 
came life,—let us say the life represented by a solitary 
cell of protoplasmic or ante-protoplasmic matter. But 
what strange potency was there! Matter assumed new 
1See Savage's ‘‘ Belief in God,” p. 34. 
