1 878.] 
Genesis of Mattel \ 
497 
as men of the ignorant class are of air, or as fish are of 
water, and they have been astonished when — as if at a 
signal — great darts of white have shot through the empy- 
rean, each sending out other darts, until the whole became 
as solid as the seas of the Hyperboreans.” “ And why 
not ?” said Vulcan ; “ most things melt by heat, but some 
things become lighter by becoming solid, and water, I think, 
is one of these, as I sometimes have occasion to observe 
when I seek the cooling snows of Olympus, or its solid ice, 
warming it to wash the soot off me before I come to supper. 
I have seen such things without going so far : have I not 
seen some men rejoicing in the soft winds of heaven, or the 
hills warmed and moistened by the sun and sea breezes, 
when suddenly Jove’s thunders rolled, and the moisture fell 
down in heavy hail that struck the frightened people and 
their flocks, and endangered, if not destroyed, their lives ? 
Why may not a touch of Jove’s fire harden the unfathomed 
space itself as readily as a tender soul, by a change of 
thought, turns to rage and cruelty ? or why may it not 
become so cold that even that may stiffen as the air itself, 
or something in it, which makes white the forests below us 
in a few hours ?” 
These Olympians were not sound chemists, and forgot 
that the total vapour was as heavy as the hail to which it 
turned ; but your free matter, by your own account, must be 
very light, or rather bearing no weight it must be very thin 
at best. Its weight and thinness are not dependent on each 
other; its very power of dispersion shows that there is 
some force in it, and it is not yet reduced to nothing, and 
you will at least allow that there is plenty to draw from. 
And yet have I not sat, at a little distance, at a large louvre 
window, and looked on in the dim evening ; the light seemed 
abundant, and nothing was observed to interrupt my view: 
the edges of the glass louvre strips were towards me, and 
after a while I began to see that there were thin lines ; sud- 
denly the space was obscured : there were no window- 
shutters, no gradual clouding. Had my eyes lost their 
power of seeing ? A veil comes gradually : could it be a 
veil ? No, it was a sudden reversal of the louvre. How 
much may be done by this, and how many analogies it 
leads to ! 
I suppose we all allow anything as a temporary fancy, 
and this I think may be considered, that the weight of a 
body is not a necessary quality, but entirely external to it. 
2. That if so a time may have been when weight came into 
creation. 3. A condition may still exist of substance having 
VOL. viii. (n.s,) 2 K 
