Genesis of Matter . 
49 1 
We collect in our gardens and conservatories the richest 
flowers that are spattered here and there through northern 
plains and tropic forests, but the “ coming race ” — whether 
of man or of some higher type of being — shall behold the 
earth one magnificent conservatory, one universal garden, 
and the music of colour shall become a familiar art. 
V. GENESIS OF MATTER. 
STRONOMERS have played with world-making, and 
mechanicians and mathematicians have laboured to 
do and to undo the movements of heavenly bodies, 
and in some departments probably the conclusions are final, 
but there is much left undone, and to chemists belongs a 
great portion both of work and imagination. To make a 
world chemically we must begin with chaos. I shall not 
attempt to go farther back to-day, but who knows where the 
imagination will venture ? We must begin with disorderly 
masses. There must be no gravitation ; that introduces 
order at once, and commands the attention of all that part 
of creation which exists in the form of that which we call 
Matter. It gives the commands “ Stand still ” or “ Move 
on,” to the greatest and smallest of the bodies which we 
know, with a calmness and inflexibility that no one attempts 
to resist. There must be no cohesion, or a large amount of 
order would exist ; but, in small and numerous communi- 
ties, a collection of villages like a region inhabited by 
savages ; and this may have been a stage — -who can tell ? 
There must be none of our elements, because they all gravi- 
tate ; and this wild condition of things we can only imagine 
by analysing the present. 
Of course we begin with hydrogen, as apparently least 
composite. The belief is that this as a gaseous body is at 
least a compound of its own particles; in other words, that 
the ultimate parts of hydrogen do not keep isolated, but 
show their love of combination by forming molecules. After- 
wards there is very little inclination visible to unite under 
ordinary temperatures. Let us suppose a molecule— or, if 
it pleases better, an atom— of hydrogen put into ajar con- 
taining nothing beyond that which fills a vacuum. No 
