A similar numerical harmony prevails in the atmosphere, which contains twenty parts of oxygen to eighty of nitrogen in every one hundred by volume, very nearly; the definite proportions never varying. Can it be imagined that the cause of this constant order, which rolled the aerial ocean of the breath of life forty-five miles deep around the globe, is itself destitute of the reason to perceive the ratios of its own wonderful works?
But select as another example a bit of limestone. You discover its elements to bear a quadruple proportion. There are twenty-two parts by weight of carbonic acid, and twenty-eight of lime. Lime yields on analysis twenty parts of the white metal calcium and eight of oxygen gas; while carbonic acid is composed of sixteen parts of oxygen to six of pure carbon. And these fixed relations of numbers are the same in every particle of limestone on the earth: in the snowy stalactite torn from the roof of coral caverns, in the ponderous fragment hurled up from the heart of the globe by the fiery hand of world-rocking volcanoes, and in the gleaming pebble which the child picks up from the waters of the brook. What a field is here for the calculation of chances! What a theme for devout and transcendent wonder! What a magnificent Bible with leaves of crystal is this among the old silent rocks! Must not such marvels of mathematical order have been produced by an efficient endowed with rationality—a cause that, to borrow the sublime language of Hebrew poetry, had the skill “to weigh the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance”?
But not only do we find numerical ratios here; symbolical angles are also detected. All the hundred forms of carbonate of lime split into six-sided figures, or regular rhombohedrons, whose alternate angles measure 105 deg. 55 min. and 75 deg. 5 min. Let the mathematician come with his trigonometry fresh from the schools to study this lofty lesson; although no science can avail for the computation of the chances against the hypothesis of an unintelligent cause for this celestial geometry of the crystal mountains.
INSTANCE III.—BOTANY.
We will make our next inductions in that study so charming to all genuine lovers of nature. Not over smoky furnaces or in darkened chambers will we read this division of our theme, but out in the sunny fields, and in the green-robed valleys, among the silken sisterhood of vegetable beauties, and beneath the radiant smile of the blue-eyed heavens.
The first ten classes of Linnæus are arranged simply according to the number of stamens presented in each blossom. For example, let us analyze a flower of the tobacco plant. It is of the fifth class, and of course has five stamens. But the equation does not end here; its corol has five parts, and the emerald cup of its calyx as many points.
Now, suppose that every bloom is produced by some efficient which cannot count; what are the chances against this combination of fives three times in a single specimen? Obviously one hundred and twenty-five; while for two flowers they amount to the sum of fifteen thousand, six hundred and twenty-five. For four blossoms the chances would be the square of the last number, and so on ad infinitum. What, then, must be the chances against the supposition of atheism in the flowers of a solitary field, in all the fields of a solar summer, in all the summers of sixty centuries?
But similar equations hold with all the vegetables to be found on the globe, and in their fruit as well as flower. Some blossoms are perfect time-pieces, marking the eternal march of the celestial lights in the firmament. Many open to the morning sun; some only to the fiery kisses of noonday; others at purple twilight when the gentle dews begin to fall; and a few in the depth of darkness, as it were to gaze on the glory of the midnight stars.
INSTANCE IV.—LIGHT.
I shall not hazard a remark as to the nature of that wonderful agent whose coming at the dawn of every day is like the sweet smile of some viewless yet omnipresent divinity, bringing with it the revelation of a new world. At present we have only to deal with mathematical evolutions, and not with the substantial essence of any fact or phenomenon.