THE GRIST OF THE GODS 



ures could express. Every one of the sixty or more 

 primary elements that make up our own bodies 

 and the solid earth beneath us must have played 

 the same part in the drama of life and death, 

 grovrth and decay, organic and inorganic, that it 

 is playing now, and will continue to play through 

 an unending future. 



This gross matter seems ever ready to vanish into 

 the transcendental. When the new physics is done 

 with it, what is there left but spirit, or something 

 akiii to it ? When the physicist has followed matter 

 through all its transformations, its final disguise 

 seems to be electricity. The solid earth is resolvable 

 into electricity, which comes as near to spirit as 

 anything we can find in the universe. 



Our senses are too dull and coarse to apprehend 

 the subtle and incessant play of forces about us — 

 the finer play and emanations of matter that go on 

 all about us and through us. From a lighted candle, 

 or gas-jet, or glowing metal shoot corpuscles or 

 electrons, the basic constituents of matter, of incon- 

 ceivable smallness — a thousand times smaller than 

 an atom of hydrogen — and at the inconceivable 

 speed of 10,000 to 90,000 miles a second. Think 

 how we are bombarded by these bullets as we sit 

 around the lamp or under the gas-jet at night, and 

 are all unconscious of them ! We are immersed in a 

 sea of forces and potentialities of which we hardly 

 dream. Of the scale of temperatures, from absolute 

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