"Land or water, mountain or lake, man or beast, bird or reptile,
cold or heat, light or darkness, all are the reflection in
physical matter of the true and real thing in the invisible and
intangible world about us. "If we have a visible body we have an
invisible one also," said Saint Paul. Modern science has proven
he was right, and that it is the invisible body which is the real
body.
"If this earth and all that it is composed of--land or ocean or
air; man or beast; pyramid or pavement--could be resolved into
the physical atoms composing everything in it or on it created by
God or man, each atom of this dust would be identical physically.
There would not be one kind of atom for iron and another for
oxygen.
"The differentiation between what are called elementary
substances is first made apparent in the molecule or first
combination of the atoms. It is not in the atom itself, unless
it be in the size, as may not be improbable. The atoms combine
in different numbers to make differently shaped molecules, and it
is from this difference in the shape of the molecule that we get
the difference between gold and silver, copper and tin, or oxygen
and hydrogen.
"In all chemical compounds, such as water and alcohol, the
molecules at the base of the two or more substances break up into
their original atoms and form a new molecule composed of all the
atoms in the two or more things combined. To make this chemical
combination we must change the rate of vibration of one or the
other or both until they strike a common chord. As we saw last
term, oxygen and hydrogen have different specific heats, and no
two other elements have the same specific heat, while heat raises
the rate of vibration. Any given amount of heat raises the
vibration of one more than another. Apply heat, and the rate of
one will rise faster than that of the other until they reach a
common chord. Then they fall apart and recombine.
"If we pass a current of electricity through this sealed jar
containing oxygen and hydrogen in mechanical union, the spark
that leaps across the points furnishes the heat, and a drop of
water appears and falls to the bottom. A large portion of the
gases has disappeared. It has been converted into water. What
is left of the gases will expand and fill the bottle.
"The drop of water but for local causes, but for a certain
attraction of the earth, would float in the centre of the jar at
the centre of gravity, as the earth does in space. But the
centre of gravity of the two bodies is far within the earth, and
the drop gets as close to it as it can. The earth's 'pull' takes
it to the bottom. If the jar were far enough away in space the
drop would float, as the earth floats, at a point where all pulls
balance, and the drop of water would have enough pull of its own,
enough gravity within itself to hold all the gas left in the jar
to itself as an atmosphere. It would be a centre of energy, a
minature world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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