“CREATION” OF LIFE
The reader will probably be interested in knowing the precise chemical formulæ employed for obtaining these astonishing results. Several such formulæ are given in Dr. Bastian’s book, “The Evolution of Life,” of which the following are samples:
- Sodium silicate, two, or three, drops.
- Ammonium phosphate, four, or six, grains.
- Dilute phosphoric acid, four, or six, drops.
- Distilled water, one fluid ounce.
Another formula is the following:
- Sodium silicate, three drops.
- Liquor ferri pernitratis, eight drops.
- Distilled water, one fluid ounce.
The reader can try the experiment for himself. It should be said, however, that although Dr. Bastian’s results were undoubted, they failed to carry conviction to the scientific world as a whole, since they contended that some experimental error must have crept in, to render these results possible; and it is significant, in this connection, that the same experiments repeated by other men failed to yield the same striking results.
Chemistry, then, enters into practically every field of inquiry—the constitution of human beings, no less than that of metals, earths or distant nebulæ. Everything material in the Universe is composed of elements, of atoms, and these atoms are built-up, as we have seen, of electrons, which are not matter at all, but bundles of energy. No two particles of matter in the world actually touch, or come near to touching one another. It is an interesting thought, when one stops to think of it that, for instance, the steel pillar supporting a “sky-scraper,” upon which rests an enormous weight (the whole of the superstructure) is not really dense and solid, as it appears, but is actually tenuous and shadowy, and that no two of its atoms ever touch one another; they are separated by relatively vast spaces, filled only with the hypothetical “ether.” The whole weight of the building may be said to rest upon nothing,—or at most upon ether, which thus bears its strain!