There are physical changes in matter, there are chemical changes, and
there is a third change, as unlike either of these as they are unlike
each other. I refer to atomic change, as in radio-activity, which gives
us lead from helium--a spontaneous change of the atoms. The energy that
keeps the earth going, says Soddy, is to be sought for in the individual
atoms; not in the great heaven-shaking voice of thunder, but in the
still small voice of the atoms. Radio-activity is the mainspring of the
universe. The only elements so far known that undergo spontaneous change
are uranium and thorium. One pound of uranium contains and slowly gives
out the same amount of energy that a hundred tons of coal evolves in its
combustion, but only one ten-billionth part of this amount is given out
every year.
Man, of course, reaps where he has not sown. How could it be otherwise?
It takes energy to sow or plant energy. We are exhausting the coal, the
natural gas, the petroleum of the rocks, the fertility of the soil. But
we cannot exhaust the energy of the winds or the tides, or of falling
water, because this energy is ever renewed by gravity and the sun. There
can be no exhaustion of our natural mechanical and chemical resources,
as some seem to fear.
I recently visited a noted waterfall in the South where electric power
is being developed on a large scale. A great column of water makes a
vertical fall of six hundred feet through a steel tube, and in the fall
develops two hundred and fifty thousand horse-power. The water comes out
of the tunnel at the bottom, precisely the same water that went in at
the top; no change whatever has occurred in it, yet a vast amount of
power has been taken out of it, or, rather, generated by its fall.
Another drop of six hundred feet would develop as much more; in fact,
the process may be repeated indefinitely, the same amount of power
resulting each time, without effecting any change in the character of
the water. The pull of gravity is the source of the power which is
distributed hundreds of miles across the country as electricity. Two
hundred and fifty thousand invisible, immaterial, noiseless horses are
streaming along these wires with incredible speed to do the work of men
and horses in widely separated parts of the country. A river of sand
falling down those tubes, if its particles moved among themselves with
the same freedom that those of the water do, would develop the same
power. The attraction of gravitation is not supposed to be electricity,
and yet here out of its pull upon the water comes this enormous voltage!
The fact that such a mysterious and ubiquitous power as electricity can
be developed from the action of matter without any alteration in its
particles, suggests the question whether or not this something that we
call life, or life-force, may not slumber in matter in the same way; but
the secret of its development we have not yet learned, as we have that
of electricity.
Radio-activity is uninfluenced by external conditions; hence we are thus
far unable to control it. Nothing that is known will effect the
transmutation of one element into another. It is spontaneous and
uncontrollable. May not life be spontaneous in the same sense?
The release of the energy associated with the structure of the atoms is
not available by any of our mechanical appliances. The process of
radio-activity involves the expulsion of atoms of helium with a velocity
three hundred times greater than that ever previously known for any
material mass or particle, and this power we are incompetent to use. The
atoms remain unchanged amid the heat and pressure of the laboratory of
nature. Iron and oxygen and so forth remain the same in the sun as here
on the earth.
Science strips gross matter of its grossness. When it is done with it,
it is no longer the obstructive something we know and handle; it is
reduced to pure energy--the line between it and spirit does not exist.
We have found that bodies are opaque only to certain rays; the X-ray
sees through this too too solid flesh. Bodies are ponderable only to our
dull senses; to a finer hand than this the door or the wall might offer
no obstruction; a finer eye than this might see the emanations from the
living body; a finer ear might hear the clash of electrons in the air.
Who can doubt, in view of what we already know, that forces and
influences from out the heavens above, and from the earth beneath, that
are beyond our ken, play upon us constantly?
The final mystery of life is no doubt involved in conditions and forces
that are quite outside of or beyond our conscious life activities, in
forces that play about us and upon and through us, that we know not of,
because a knowledge of them is not necessary to our well-being. "Our
eye takes in only an octave of the vibrations we call light," because no
more is necessary for our action or our dealing with things. The
invisible rays of the spectrum are potent, but they are beyond the ken
of our senses. There are sounds or sound vibrations that we do not hear;
our sense of touch cannot recognize a gossamer, or the gentler air
movements.
I began with the contemplation of the beauty and terror of the
thunderbolt--"God's autograph," as one of our poets (Joel Benton) said,
"written upon the sky." Let me end with an allusion to another aspect of
the storm that has no terror in it--the bow in the clouds: a sudden
apparition, a cosmic phenomenon no less wonderful and startling than the
lightning's flash. The storm with terror and threatened destruction on
one side of it, and peace and promise on the other! The bow appears like
a miracle, but it is a commonplace of nature; unstable as life, and
beautiful as youth. The raindrops are not changed, the light is not
changed, the laws of the storms are not changed; and yet, behold this
wonder!
But all these strange and beautiful phenomena springing up in a world of
inert matter are but faint symbols of the mystery and the miracle of the
change of matter from the non-living to the living, from the elements in
the clod to the same elements in the brain and heart of man.