The electric constitution of matter is quite beyond anything we can
imagine. The atoms are little worlds by themselves, and the whole
mystery of life and death is in their keeping. The whole difference in
the types of mind and character among men is supposed to be in their
keeping. The different qualities and properties of bodies are in their
keeping. Whether an object is hot or cold to our senses, depends upon
the character of their vibrations; whether it be sweet or sour,
poisonous or innocuous to us, depends upon how the atoms select their
partners in the whirl and dance of their activities. The hardness and
brilliancy of the diamond is supposed to depend upon how the atoms of
carbon unite and join hands.
I have heard the view expressed that all matter, as such, is dead
matter, that the molecules of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, iron,
phosphorus, calcium, and so on, in a living body, are themselves no more
alive than the same molecules in inorganic matter. Nearly nine tenths of
a living body is water; is not this water the same as the water we get
at the spring or the brook? is it any more alive? does water undergo any
chemical change in the body? is it anything more than a solvent, than a
current that carries the other elements to all parts of the body? There
are any number of chemical changes or reactions in a living body, but
are the atoms and molecules that are involved in such changes radically
changed? Can oxygen be anything but oxygen, or carbon anything but
carbon? Is what we call life the result of their various new
combinations? Many modern biologists hold to this view. In this
conception merely a change in the order of arrangement of the molecules
of a substance--which follows which or which is joined to which--is
fraught with consequences as great as the order in which the letters of
the alphabet are arranged in words, or the words themselves are arranged
in sentences. The change of one letter in a word often utterly changes
the meaning of that word, and the changing of a word in the sentence may
give expression to an entirely different idea. Reverse the letters in
the word "God," and you get the name of our faithful friend the dog.
Huxley and Tyndall both taught that it was the way that the ultimate
particles of matter are compounded that makes the whole difference
between a cabbage and an oak, or between a frog and a man. It is a hard
proposition. We know with scientific certainty that the difference
between a diamond and a piece of charcoal, or between a pearl and an
oyster-shell, is the way that the particles of carbon in the one case,
and of calcium carbide in the other, are arranged. We know with equal
certainty that the difference between certain chemical bodies, like
alcohol and ether, is the arrangement of their ultimate particles, since
both have the same chemical formula. We do not spell acetic acid,
alcohol, sugar, starch, animal fat, vegetable oils, glycerine, and the
like, with the same letters; yet nature compounds them all of the same
atoms of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, but in different proportions and
in different orders.
Chemistry is all-potent. A mechanical mixture of two or more elements
is a simple affair, but a chemical mixture introduces an element of
magic. No conjurer's trick can approach such a transformation as that of
oxygen and hydrogen gases into water. The miracle of turning water into
wine is tame by comparison. Dip plain cotton into a mixture of nitric
and sulphuric acids and let it dry, and we have that terrible explosive,
guncotton. Or, take the cellulose of which cotton is composed, and add
two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, and we have sugar. But we are
to remember that the difference here indicated is not a quantitative,
but a qualitative one, not one affecting bulk, but affecting structure.
Truly chemistry works wonders. Take ethyl alcohol, or ordinary spirits
of wine, and add four more atoms of carbon to the carbon molecule, and
we have the poison carbolic acid. Pure alcohol can be turned into a
deadly poison, not by adding to, but simply by taking from it; take out
one atom of carbon and two of hydrogen from the alcohol molecule, and we
have the poison methyl alcohol. But we are to remember that the
difference here indicated is not a quantitative, but a qualitative one,
not one affecting bulk, but affecting structure.
In our atmosphere we have a mechanical mixture of nitrogen and oxygen,
four parts of nitrogen to one of oxygen. By uniting the nitrogen and
oxygen chemically (N_{2}O) we have nitrous oxide, laughing-gas. Ordinary
starch is made up of three different elements--six parts of carbon, ten
parts of hydrogen, and five parts of oxygen (C_{6}H_{10}O_{5}). Now if
we add water to this compound, we have a simple mixture of starch and
water, but if we bring about a chemical union with the elements of water
(hydrogen and oxygen), we have grape sugar. This sugar is formed in
green leaves by the agency of sunlight, and is the basis of all plant
and animal food, and hence one of the most important things in nature.
Carbon is a solid, and is seen in its pure state in the diamond, the
hardest body in nature and the most valued of all precious stones, but
it enters largely into all living bodies and is an important constituent
of all the food we eat. As a gas, united with the oxygen of the air,
forming carbon dioxide, it was present at the beginning of life, and
probably helped kindle the first vital spark. In the shape of wood and
coal, it now warms us and makes the wheels of our material civilization
go round. Diamond stuff, through the magic of chemistry, plays one of
the principle rôles in our physical life; we eat it, and are warmed and
propelled by it, and cheered by it. Taken as carbonic acid gas into our
lungs, it poisons us; taken into our stomachs, it stimulates us;
dissolved in water, it disintegrates the rocks, eating out the carbonate
of lime which they contain. It is one of the principal actors in the
drama of organized matter.
V
We have a good illustration of the power of chemistry, and how closely
it is dogging the footsteps of life, in the many organic compounds it
has built up out of the elements, such as sugar, starch, indigo,
camphor, rubber, and so forth, all of which used to be looked upon as
impossible aside from life-processes. It is such progress as this that
leads some men of science to believe that the creation of life itself is
within the reach of chemistry. I do not believe that any occult or
transcendental principle bars the way, but that some unknown and perhaps
unknowable condition does, as mysterious and unrepeatable as that which
separates our mental life from our physical. The transmutation of the
physical into the psychical takes place, but the secret of it we do not
know. It does not seem to fall within the law of the correlation and the
conservation of energy.
Free or single atoms are very rare; they all quickly find their mates or
partners. This eagerness of the elements to combine is one of the
mysteries. If the world of visible matter were at one stroke resolved
into its constituent atoms, it would practically disappear; we might
smell it, or taste it, if we were left, but we could not see it, or feel
it; the water would vanish, the solid ground would vanish--more than
half of it into oxygen atoms, and the rest mainly into silicon atoms.
The atoms of different bodies are all alike, and presumably each holds
the same amount of electric energy. One wonders, then, how the order in
which they are arranged can affect them so widely as to produce bodies
so unlike as, say, alcohol and ether. This brings before us again the
mystery of chemical arrangement or combination, so different from
anything we know among tangible bodies. It seems to imply that each atom
has its own individuality. Mix up a lot of pebbles together, and the
result would be hardly affected by the order of the arrangement, but mix
up a lot of people, and the result would be greatly affected by the fact
of who is elbowing who. It seems the same among the mysterious atoms, as
if some complemented or stimulated those next them, or had an opposite
effect. But can we think of the atoms in a chemical compound as being
next one another, or merely in juxtaposition? Do we not rather have to
think of them as identified with one another to an extent that has no
parallel in the world of ponderable bodies? A kind of sympathy or
affinity makes them one in a sense that we only see realized among
living beings.
Chemical activity is the first step from physical activity to vital
activity, but the last step is taken rarely--the other two are
universal. Chemical changes involve the atom. What do vital changes
involve? We do not know. We can easily bring about the chemical
changes, but not so the vital changes. A chemical change destroys one or
more substances and produces others totally unlike them; a vital change
breaks up substances and builds up other bodies out of them; it results
in new compounds that finally cover the earth with myriads of new and
strange forms.
X