THOUGHTS ON NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 19 
such tendency. From the sand, salts, and water we cannot 
make a rope; but let there be damp earth, containing the 
necessary materials, in which we plant seeds, and nature will 
spin us a rope, or make a branch, showing that the power 
of things to resist strain is a matter of construction, not of 
gravitation. This power to resist strain does not depend on 
what we call life, but is independent of it, as may be seen 
from things that we term dead, or that never had life, as in 
the cases of the hemp and the wire ropes. Nature constructs 
as she will, or can. 
At the beginning of this treatise the fundamental law of 
material combination was stated. Let us take up another 
link in the chain, and reason backwards. Imagine a growing 
tree, composed of many living vegetable cells, the life and 
_ growth of which depend upon sun force, that in the natural 
laboratory, the tree, carries on much chemical work. Sun 
force is material motion. Suppose the tree to consist of one 
hundred million vegetable cells that owe their life and growth 
to sun force; then one million, one thousand, one hundred, 
one cell will owe life and growth to material motion: and if 
one cell, all cells. All the protoplasmic life and work is 
carried on, and depends upon the subtile movements of the 
granules, corpuscles, atoms, and molecules, of the protoplasm 
and ether; and, as there is no barrier in the protoplasm 
between vegetable and animal life, we arrive at the 
inevitable conclusion that all natural phenomena, organic 
or inorganic, living or dead, owe existence to material 
motion, and are the result of the speed of material portions, 
moving, grouping, re-grouping, and ever changing under the 
rule of material motion, in a succession of dancing and resting 
pictures and problems of exquisite intricacy, variety, and 
beauty. 
