Picture - Cosmic Polymath

A CREATOR AND DESIGNER NECESSARY TO UNIVERSE 349
wholly identical substances in the inorganic and organic kingdoms only repetition, as apart from differentiation,
can result. There is no universal matter, dead or living, which, being absolutely homogeneous and identical in
all its parts and particles, can of itself, and by itself, produce the various substances met with in the inorganic
kingdom, and in the several plants and animals found in the organic kingdom. The differentiation of matter and
force is fundamental ahke in the inorganic and organic Idngdoms. The so-called affinities in chemistry favour
this beUef. We have proof of it also in the histories of the spores, germs, and seeds of plants ; in the eggs and
ova of animals ; and in the peculiar properties of the male and female elements on which reproduction depends.
The reproductive elements, whether consisting of germs, seeds, eggs, or ova, self-fertilising or otherwise, vary
infinitely as to their ultimate substance, and this variation or differentiation can alone account for the bewilder-
ing multitude of plants and animals on the earth. It is not otherwise possible to explain how from one seed
proceeds a hchen, from another a fern, from another an oak ; or how from one ovum emerges a fish, from another
a reptile, from another a bird, and from another a mammal. Neither the microscope nor chemical analysis can
detect the differentiation here referred to, but that it exists cannot be doubted when the final results are duly
considered. The conditions of reproduction are, in numerous cases, nearly, if not altogether, identical, but the
reproductions are as the poles asunder. Mere force, however gentle or violent, cannot convert practically identical
matter into anything other than itself. This goes without saying. Heat, light, electricity, and other forms of
motion, while within Umits convertible, do not destroy the substances on which they act, and which they influence
to a greater or less extent. At one time, and indeed till very recently, protoplasm was regarded as a simple, wholly
undifferentiated organic substance whose parts and particles were identical in ultimate composition. Protoplasm is
now known to be reticulated and to vary considerably in chemical composition. The difficulties involved in
the differentiation of plants and animals during development are not overcome by saying that one change
begets another, and that one set of conditions inaugurates others in endless succession, until the several
plants and animals with their various organs are completed. To get the initial changes and conditions
which inaugurate successive developments there must be plurality and heterogeneity of both matter and
force. Of simple ultimate matter and force we have no knowledge. All our instruments of research, the micro-
scope, the telescope, chemical analysis, the spectroscope, the polariscope, &c., reveal not one kind of matter
but a great and ever-increasing variety of matter. Already there are over seventy known elements, and
these will doubtless be added to as time advances. Within the last few years no fewer than four new gases
have been discovered (Argon, Helium, Krypton, and Zeon), and some new metals, notably Eadium.^ The tend-
ency is not in the direction of simphcity as regards matter and force, but complexity ; the complexity being
of a very bewildering kind, as manifested more especially in heat, fight, magnetism, electricity, wireless and
other telegraphy, ether in its several phases, optics, acoustics, Becquerel, Hertz, Rontgen, and other rays, to
say nothing of the dehcate sensitiveness of the plates employed in terrestrial, celestial, and other photography.
The extraordinary powers possessed by radium (one of the new metals) have invested matter and force with
untold possibifities and an ever-increasing interest. Radium apparently presents the unique phenomenon of an
element breaking up or disintegrating and emitting streams of matter and force, which for intensity are altogether
unparalleled.
The radio-active elements and their emanations are opening up what is practically a new field in physics. The
properties of these elements investigated by Plucker, Hittorf, Crookes, Curie, Lodge, Rutherford, Ramsay, and
others can be exhibited in the laboratory. By means of a vertical glass vacuum tube 18 inches long and an inch
wide, connected at top and bottom with the negative and positive poles of an electric battery, electric sparks (arti-
ficial lightning) can be transmitted ; these causing the interior of the tube to glow with a beautiful rose-coloured
shimmer. Sir WilUam Crookes demonstrated that each particular substance gives out its own special radiance.
Thus alumina gives a deep red flare, the sulphate of zinc a rich green, a portion of calc-spar a fine crimson, and so
on. Something hke a stream of radiance rushes through the glass tube. According to Crookes there proceeds
from the negative pole or cathode, a shower of amazingly minute particles, not beams of fight, but things, which carry
negative electricity. They can even be made to propel a miniature wheel on rails within the tube. When the
electric current is turned on, the little wheel travels briskly. The inference is, that whatever the nature of electricity
the so-called cathode-rays are things, particles, or corpuscles, substantial entities. As proving the substantial or
material nature of the rays they can be deflected or bent by the aid of a magnet appUed outside the glass tube.
Certain rays cannot be so deflected. In these cases they are regarded as rays of fight. This is true of Rontgen's
X-rays. As the X-rays cannot be deflected by the magnet they are befieved to be not matter, but waves m the ether
that fills all space. In this connection M. Henri Becquerel made an important discovery, namely, that the metal
' Argon was discovered by Lord Rayleigh and Sir William Ramsay jointly in 1894, Helium and Krypton by Sir William Ramsay, Zeon by
Sir William Ramsay and Mr. Travers, and Radium by M. and Mme. Curie at a later date.