9. MATTER IS CHEMICALLY SELECTIVE.
When the elements combine to form molecules they always combine in definite ways and in definite proportions. Carbon will combine with hydrogen, but will drop it if it can get oxygen. Oxygen will combine with iron or lead or sodium, but cannot be made to combine with fluorine. No more than two atoms of oxygen can be made to unite with one carbon atom, nor more than one hydrogen with one chlorine atom. There is thus an apparent choice for the kind and number of associates in molecular structure, and the instability of a molecule depends altogether upon the presence in its neighbourhood of other atoms for which some of the
elements in the molecule have a stronger attraction or affinity than they have for the atoms they are now combined with. Thus iron is not stable in the presence of water molecules, and it becomes iron oxide; iron oxide is not stable in the presence of hot sulphur, it becomes an iron sulphide. All the elements are thus selective, and it is by such means that they may be chemically identified.
There is no phenomenon in the ether that is comparable with this. Evidently there could not be unless there were atomic structures having in some degree different characteristics which we know the ether to be without.