LECTURE ON AGNOSTICISM. 
67 
will appear, under these circumstances, as somewhat smaller than 
a cricket-ball. 
Take a crystal of calc-spar; it is capable, as you know, of 
being decomposed into carbonic acid and quick-lime, and the in¬ 
ference would be that if you pass carbonic acid over quick-lime 
you will form calc-spar; but no; you will form lime carbonate, 
simply, but not calc-spar. Or take oxygen and hydrogen, pass 
an electric spark through them, and they disappear and a quan¬ 
tity of water appears in their place. There is no similarity be¬ 
tween the properties of the water and those of the oxygen and 
hydrogen which have given rise to it. At 32^ and below it, 
oxygen and hydrogen are elastic gaseous bodies, whose particles 
tend to rush away from one another with great force; water at 
the same temperature is a solid whose particles tend to cohere 
into definite geometrical shapes, and sometimes build up frosty 
imitations of the most complex forms of vegetable foliage. You 
say these are the properties of water, but that is all you know 
about it. 
Again, matter may change its form, but the quantity of mat¬ 
ter remains the same. Man can neither create nor destroy a 
single particle. An element is an immortal body. Water may 
disappear in vapor ; wood and coal are consumed, but in these 
not a particle of matter is annihilated; the apparent destruction 
is merely a change of form. In due time the vapor becomes 
condensed and turns into water, and in the burning carbon the 
atoms in a gaseous form are brought again into a visible condi¬ 
tion in the leaves of plants. And what is true of matter is equally 
true of force. Motion, heat, light and electricity are mutually 
convertible without loss. The conversion of motion into heat 
was known to our aboriginal brethren, who built their fires by 
rubbing two pieces of wood one against the other. The move¬ 
ment of the piston of a steam engine expresses so much expansive 
power in the steam, and this power is the expression and correlate 
of the heat produced by the combustion of so much fuel. Every 
pound of water heated one degree will raise one pound weight 772 
feet, and the fall of one pound weight 772 feet will make one 
pound of water one degree warmer. The disappearance and in- 
