With these short notes we have also outlined the history of our own earth. The same gaseous state in which our sun is at present belonged once to the earth according to science of today. During enormous periods of time the incandescent matter of the earth radiated light and heat into the cold universe. Finally so much heat was lost that chemical attraction could assert itself. Regarded as a sun, the earth was then dying and it entered upon the chemical era. During this state the elements combined with each other according to general chemical laws into such compounds as were the necessary outcome of their atomic weights, valence, and positive or negative qualities. In this connection it is sufficient to point out that these processes must go on incessantly until compounds have been formed in which the chemical forces have reached equilibrium and rest. In the case of our planet these products formed the solid crust of the earth, the primeval rock, the mineral world, further water and finally air, the oxygen and nitrogen of which may be considered as remains of the elements. Furthermore, according to a law known to science as that “of the least resistance,” chemical reactions proceed from compounds which have more energy to such as have less, wherefore it follows that each product was as poor in energy as the conditions at the time permitted.
If we now especially give our attention to the combustion taking place in chemical processes, this era may also be called the period of combustion or the general world-fire, names which are exact even if we use combustion in the common, limited sense of oxidation. Oxygen is considered to constitute about one-half of the solid crust of the earth, and when to this quantitative preponderance is added its extraordinarily strong affinity to other elements, these must with necessity burn into oxides just as has been the case.
It is therefore with the products of combustion, that is to say, the ashes and the remains from a general colossal world-fire, that the earth enters its planetary state, at which stage it becomes suitable for the creation and evolution of living beings. It is from burnt substances that the organisms must form the combustible matter that constitutes their material clothing. How can this be done? In the only possible way; that is, by again decomposing the products of combustion into their elements and bringing them into such combinations that a new combustion may take place. Are the products of combustion able to perform this transformation spontaneously? They have just lost the fund of energy that could have made them combustible and this lost heat must again be stored up and therefore taken from some other source, as no heat can be created from nothing.
When the chemical forces had once reached equilibrium and rest, the earth might then be compared to an immense corpse thrown into space and which must remain in the same state eternally, or until it met with a cosmic catastrophe. Not the slightest movement or variation could now take place spontaneously on its surface. If a change happened it must have had its cause in another source of power, and two such sources existed. One was the earth’s own internal heat, and the other the sun, and we must therefore consider if either of these, or both together could produce combustible organic substance.
In regard first to the earth’s internal heat we might immediately eliminate this source of energy, as it has no direct connection whatever with the origin of organic matter, an assertion so commonly agreed upon that we need not dwell further upon it.
Infinitely more important is the sun, which has been and is the cause of most of the changes taking place on the earth’s surface after its cooling off. The sun causes the circulation of the air and water and thereby the whole series of disintegration and decay, the history of which is written with indelible letters in our geological sediments and formations. These formations tell us that new oceans and continents, new minerals and rocks have successively been formed, but nowhere that organic substances were ever built up spontaneously under the sun’s influence. The processes of decay, on the contrary, proceed in the entirely opposite direction.
Through them nothing is formed but compounds poorer in energy than before. In decaying, the products of combustion absorb, if possible, more oxygen, become more burnt or oxidized, so that this whole process may be called an after-burning, a more thorough combustion of the remnants from the first general world-fire.
The spontaneous activity of nature’s forces, then, go in a direction just opposite to the one necessary for the production of organic substances. And anything else was not to be expected. The products of combustion resemble fallen weights, slack bow-strings, water below the fall, etc., whereas combustible organic matter might be compared to lifted weights, set bow-strings, water above the fall, etc. If matter has once fallen from a higher to a lower level of energy it can never spontaneously return, especially as it has just lost the necessary store of energy. As impossible as it is for the swift current to turn its course, or for the fallen weight to lift itself or for the discharged bow-string to set itself again, so impossible is it for the products of combustion spontaneously to turn into combustible substances.