“Suppose, then, we take a given quantity of ice and melt it over a fire, it is utterly impossible—no matter what amount of heat is applied—to raise the temperature till all the ice has been melted; thus a pound of ice at 0° and a pound of water at 100° cannot possibly be raised higher than 0°, but will remain two pounds of water at 0° till the ice is melted, irrespective of the heat applied. And if we take the same two pounds of water in experiment further, and bring it to boiling-point, converting it into steam, no amount of heat given to it will raise the temperature of the steam a fraction of a degree till _all_ the water has become steam; but when all of it is steam, we can then, by the application of more heat, get superheated steam, to an explosive point of enormous force. These are but a few of the complete violations of the ordinary laws of nature, and they answer their purpose well in the economy of creation, for you will see that did heat but raise the temperature of the ice in an equal ratio to its addition, the ice would melt in a moment, and thus the first warm day, or the first ray of sunshine, would cause every particle of snow and ice on the hills and in the valleys to melt instantly, and the mighty glaciers and bergs would also become almost instantly liquid, and a general inundation of many parts of the world would be the inevitable result; whilst in the case of steam, if that formed in equal ratio with the heat applied to water, the water would immediately become _all_ steam and would at once be superheated and explosive. The useful and harmless saucepan, kettle, or boiler, would produce such a deadly explosive as to require special apparatus and precautions to manufacture and manipulate steam, or even hot water, and the mere drinking of a harmless cup of any warm beverage, or eating steaming food, would have more disastrous results and blow us to atoms more effectively than drinking ‘corpsogen’ and then falling down.” “Then what do you consider heat to be?”