THE CREATION OF GOD.

BY
DR. JACOB HARTMANN,
M.D. St. Louis Medical College; Bachelor of Medicine, Toronto University;
M.B. Trinity College, Ontario; Member of the College
of Physicians and Surgeons, Ontario; Licentiate of the
Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons,
Edinburgh, Scotland; Member of the
County Medical Society of
New York, etc., etc.

New York:
THE TRUTH SEEKER COMPANY,
28 Lafayette Place.

Copyrighted, 1893,
by
Dr. Jacob Hartmann.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.	[The Universal Aspect],							9
II.	[The Earth],							21
III.	[The Chemical Aspect],							39
IV.	[The Sun],							51
V.	[Genesis—The Creation],							67
VI.	[Genesis—The Garden of Eden],							80
VII.	[The Deluge],							92
VIII.	[The Scriptural God—The Creation],							101
IX.	[The Creation of God—Abraham],							112
X.	[Moses—Confirmation of the Idea of God],							119
XI.	[Samuel the Kingmaker],							138
XII.	[God Save the King],							147
XIII.	[Jehova Takes a Rest],							170
XIV.	[The End of National Life],							178
XV.	[The Christian Era],							200
XVI.	[Organic Life—Vegetable],							212
XVII.	[Organic Life—Animal],							221
		The Master Tissues.
		The Muscular Tissues.
		The Nervous Tissues.
XVIII.	[Food and Food-Substances],							242
XIX.	[Elimination of Waste Substances],							250
		In General.
		By the Lungs.
		By the Skin.
		By the Kidneys.
XX.	[Digestion, Nutrition],							278
XXI.	[The Elementary Substances],							300
XXII.	[Alcohol and Its Effects on the System],							310
XXIII.	[The Soul—What is it?]							321
		The Mind.
XXIV.	[Sin and Salvation],							340
XXV.	[The Ecclesiastical Kindergarten],							353
XXVI.	[Rational Review],							372
XXVII.	[Visions—Bible Dreams-Revelations],							380
XXVIII.	[The Planetary Gods],							392
XXIX.	[Every Man His Own God],							403
		Tables [Gateways to Knowledge]. [Morals: Whence They Spring].
XXX.	[The Non Credo],							418
		Rules for Human Conduct.

Table of Contents

ILLUSTRATIONS.

PREFACE.

“Si les nommes étaient capables de gouverner toute la conduite de leur vie par un dessein reglé, si la fortune leur était toujours favorable, leur âme serait libre de toute superstition.”

—Spinoza, 1650.

“Il n’y a pas de moyen plus efficace que la

Superstition pour gouverner la multitude.”

—Quinte Curce.

“But in the temple of their hireling hearts

Gold is a living god, and rules in scorn

All earthly things but virtue.”

“Falsehood demands but gold to pay the pangs

Of outraged conscience; for the slavish priest

Sets no great value on his hireling faith.”

“But human pride

Is skillful to invent most serious names

To hide its ignorance.”

—Shelley.

At this time, in this age of agitation, unrest, dissatisfaction, and doubt among the masses, and all classes, in every civilized part of the globe, in all communities and human organizations, in church and out of church, ecclesiastical bodies of all shades; besides the vast number of theories and doctrines of a popular socialistic, anti-poverty, communistic order, etc., a prevailing skepticism has seized the minds of men, as to the truth, validity, and stability of the entire religious fabric. The unsettled condition of the minds of men, the disturbing elements of the laboring classes, the church quarrels, clerical litigations, disputes, wrangling, and mutual hate about scriptural authenticity, its truth and supernaturalism, the heresies and blasphemies, the unsatisfactory condition of the Roman church, the constant and unremitting papal correspondence, the petty bickering, the selfish zeal, the greed for money, the anxiety to raise funds for all kinds of ecclesiastical establishments, naturally arouse suspicion whether the idea of a God is not going out of fashion, whether the clergy has not lost faith in the Book, whether the Jew, the Jehovistic aristocrat, has not been the primary inventor of these supernatural wares, whether the Christian theologians are not beginning to lose their sway and grip and their pretended supernatural authority over their ignorant devotees. We may ask frankly, honestly, truthfully, and in perfect good faith:

Has not the time arrived for a grand and human reformation? For new methods of teaching, for new and more accurate ideas, for a more precise knowledge of the natural, for instructions in absolute facts, for a more thorough understanding of natural laws, for a broader comprehension of man himself and his surroundings, for an abandonment of all the supernatural subterfuge, ignorance, and superstition, of religious fables, miracles, false theories, and misleading doctrines as to God, with their immense sacrifice of human life.

Within the limits of the church nothing is to be hoped for, nor can anything be expected, except the greedy grasping of the hard-earned money of the ignorant laboring classes, the fanatical devotees, to sustain and uphold a mercenary priesthood, a rotten supernatural system that has proved so pernicious to mankind. Europe, at one time the rich pasture for the holy Roman Catholic apostolic church, no longer pours the milk and honey into the supreme pontiff’s lap as of yore. In a letter dated “Rome, Feb. 3d,” Ledochowski writes of Leo XIII.’s solicitude for the good of religion in these parts: “The supreme pontiff has many reasons of sadness on account of the distresses which the impudent endeavors of wicked men are trying to bring upon Christianity, especially in Europe. On the other hand, it is a great consolation to him to see the increase of Catholicism, with God’s aid, elsewhere in the world.” Of course Ledochowski signifies the pope’s great admiration for the wonderful resources—for this flourishing, prolific, and generous American milch-cow. The Roman administration, with that marvelous business tact so characteristic of that church, turns its tender attention, with all its pontifical flummery and grotesque maneuvers, to insinuate its methods upon this republic, to overawe us with a blaze of stupefaction, profounder ignorance and superstition, by honoring America with a resident tax-collector, and to save Gods, their divinities, with the Christ, Holy Ghost, Virgin Immaculate, saints, angels, and all the other theological absurdities.

Is it not high time for man and woman to learn that their dependence on any supernatural aid is futile, their prayers and appeals to an imaginary God worse than useless, their cringing fear for the so-called sacred authority cowardly, their submission to priestly rule and authority slavish, and the inculcating of biblical church lore stupefying? Is it not time for man and woman to comprehend themselves, their powers, the uses of their several organs, their functions, and the natural laws that govern them? That ideas, thought, consciousness, intellect, understanding, imagination, knowledge, etc., etc., are but the functions of nervous matter? That everything we know, have discovered, developed, or produced, is the natural product of nerve tissue.

In reviewing the history of this theologico-ecclesiastical organization—this Jehovistic Christianized system, from the very beginning to the present time, we find that this many-shaded, ever-changeable, greedy, grasping creed has done during the four thousand years of its existence a vast amount of mischief and little or no good. It had to be civilized instead of civilizing. Instead of elevating their followers, priests rather made every effort to keep them in subjection, steeped in ignorance and superstition.

In presenting these pages to the public, it is for the purpose of exposing some simple intelligible facts, some wholesome truths, some few scientific revelations discovered by men of eminence, knowledge, and wisdom, regarding ourselves, this terrestrial globe, and the universe at large of which we are part. It is not possible in modern times to force men to believe, to accept the impossible. At this period of mental transition, the tendency is to think, to reason, to gain knowledge and truth, to be self-supporting, self-sustaining, independent, free, and untrammeled by barbaric delusion and terrorism. They no longer fear and cower before a shadow of some supernatural imaginary thing or being that has no existence and never had.

Man must learn to know that man is an evolution of nature’s forces, a product of this terrestrial globe; that all the physical and physiological phenomena of his fine muscular and nervous system are the natural products and functions of his organization; that whether soul, spirit, God or Jehovah, they were evolved in the brain of man; that man, as man, with all his endowments, faculties, and capabilities, is part and parcel of this earth, a natural result of natural causes, and the supernatural, the God or gods, is the natural product of man’s working faculties.

The scientific world has long since discarded every idea of anything supernatural, declared the impossibility, falsity, and absurdity of the scriptural fable, and that God, Jehovah, with all the ingenious priestly inventions, has proved itself pernicious and oppressive to humanity and contrary to intelligence, reason, and common sense. Man to know his rights must know himself, his nature and his natural surroundings, and if he knows himself, he will learn that God did not create man, but that man created God, and that every man is and must be his own God to be a true man. Know the natural, never mind the supernatural.

THE CREATION OF GOD.

CHAPTER I.

UNIVERSAL ASPECT.

The beginning of intellectual development consists of observant experience. By frequent and repeated observation man acquired a familiarity with the subjects of that process—a clearer and better understanding of them.

Thus, the Chaldean shepherds, while minding their flocks of sheep and cattle, lazily and continuously watched the sky and starry hosts, and by degrees recognized, and acquired a knowledge of, many of the stars, laying the foundation for astronomy. Authorities state that they composed seventy-two volumes on that science, these books dating as far back as 2,540 B.C., treating of the polar star, Venus, Mars, and so on. It is possible that many errors attended their observations; many mistakes may have entered their explanations. That was natural, considering the remoteness of the times and the lack of facilities.

Knowledge and truth never come easily. The former is very hard to acquire, the latter very difficult to discover.

Every truth, every new idea, has to battle against old established notions. If the new idea is persisted in, which is ordinarily the case, a struggle must ensue. The old idea resists, refuses to yield, no matter how false, ridiculous, or pernicious it may be. Yield, however, it must, and does in the course of time. Truth must win in the long run, though it has to fight its way through depths of ignorance, prejudice, and superstition, sustained by hate, bigotry, terrorism, and persecution.

As century after century passed in the Dark Ages, apostles of science and truth appeared, here and there, now and then, calm, dignified, patient, persistent and persevering, untiring, self-denying, men of superior intellect, unswayed and undismayed by existing authorities. These men gave us, though not a complete, a very ample revelation of nature, unfolding its mysteries, explaining its phenomena, making known the truth as far as men had been able to discover up to their time.

Nature with its laws man had to observe carefully in order to learn to unravel its secrets, its workings, its forces. There is no way to reveal them except through the mind of man. There are no means of knowing or discovering the intricacies and subtleties of nature’s hidden and inexhaustible resources but by careful thought, reason, constant study and application. Not a single problem has ever been solved—in fact, one cannot be solved—except by acquired intellectual powers, developed by the refining process of education of the great nervous centers of man.

Many scholars have devoted and still devote their time, their energy, their life, in search of new facts, new truths, concerning the stars, planetary system, and this terrestrial globe we live on especially.

Centuries before Christ’s time, and after, men were engaged in developing the science of Astronomy—Anaximander, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Herschel, and many others. These men were the apostles of truth, the teachers of facts, and some of them were martyrs to science.

The great civilizer, the press of modern times, was recently filled with accounts about the planet Mars, comet, etc., giving all the detailed information obtainable.

Everyone who reads the newspapers learns something about Mars, and ventures to give his opinion, whether it is like the earth—inhabited, has seas or atmosphere, etc. So that, whatever new facts are revealed, new truths announced, the minds of men are made so much richer.

Knowledge, the progress of science, the discoveries of important facts, the improvements of political, social, or civil laws, do not come to us spontaneously, nor do they come to us suddenly in overpowering quantities; it is a process of gradual acquirement, a slow accumulation, to which every generation contributes its quota of observation and experience that makes up the total wealth of aggregate thought, and is handed down from generation to generation, our common inheritance.

This common inheritance is neither all true nor all good. A large proportion that has been handed down to us by the ancients is not true or good, though it is believed to be true and good.

The revelations of absolute truths, of actual facts, are of more recent date—discoveries made within the last few centuries. The spurious, so-called revelations are the works of antiquity, which are not based on truth or fact or knowledge or experience. The mental faculties of pristine men were primitive, and their ideas were as primitive. They lived in an age of infancy; it was all surprise, wonder, astonishment, and miracle.

When Kepler discovered the law that “Planets revolve in ellipses with the sun at one focus,” he worked hard for many days, and after many trials succeeded. He also discovered a second law, which he defines, “A line connecting the center of the earth with the center of the sun passes over equal spaces in equal times;” and his third law, “The squares of the times of revolutions of the planets about the sun are proportioned to the center of their mean distance from the sun.”

No one ever claimed for Kepler, nor has he laid claim himself, that he was inspired by God, or received the idea through any supernatural agency.

The hostile and bitter opposition that Galileo met on the part of the Christian Church is too well known; but the importance of his discoveries, and the truth, remains.

All intelligent persons ought to understand Newton’s law of gravitation. If they understood the full import and significance of that law, they would never believe in the absurd miracles of Moses, Joshua, Elijah, Christ and Company. The law: “Every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle of matter with a force directly proportional to its quantity of matter, and decreasing as the square of the distance increases.”

It is most remarkable—that man discovering great truths, concerning which there has never been any dispute, or controversy, or fight; that stand, unaltered and unchanged, forever. Such men have not been inspired by God, Jehovah, Christ, or the Holy Ghost, or anything supernatural. They have accomplished their works by their powers of observation, great mental efforts, skillful explanation and elucidation, accomplished by hard and untiring work.

It is astonishing that, in the presence of so many revealed natural truths, so many ascertained scientific facts, and numerous discoveries in this century, which is claimed to be much advanced in civilization, intelligent persons—teachers, preachers, priests, and those laying claim to scholarship—still believe that the visionary figures, the product of distorted imagination or hallucination, of men like Isaiah, Ezekiel, etc., were of supernatural origin.

The incredible stories found in the Bible, the fabulous inventions concocted in the imagination of some person or persons away in Chaldea many thousand years ago, are still taught to be true, and the children in the Sunday-schools are instructed to believe these absurdities.

The undue haste exhibited in the first chapter of Genesis, in creating the earth, etc., is one of those wonderful puzzles to a child’s mind. It is a something that is not easily explained at length to young people without awaking the suspicion of its impossibility, and requires considerable ingenuity to satisfy inquiring minds concerning it. The supernaturalists get over it by a final and complete answer, that admits of no argument—that “With God everything is possible.” That being absolutely untrue, the answer explains nothing, but has a tendency to stupefy the child and hinder its educational advancement, for the reason that such an answer puts a stop to all farther inquiry. This really has been the effect of this pernicious teaching for many centuries.

All the stories, fables, myths, handed down to us from antiquity may be classed in the same category. There are many of them—yes, a perfect wilderness. All are true in part, but false as a whole. Upon close examination we find glimmerings of truth in all of them. The difference lies in the kind, not in the quality. In the biblical story of creation, the writers had evidently observed, and knew, there were an earth, water, stars, and something above the earth which they called heaven, the atmosphere. That was the limit of their knowledge. They knew they existed, and things and objects that surrounded them existed, and they made an attempt in their primitive method to account for the manner in which these things came into existence. They could know nothing about it, because the most important discoveries were made thousands of years later.

Hesiod, 900 B.C., in his “Theogonia,” invokes the Muses who inhabit the heavenly mansions, and whose knowledge of generation and birth he had formerly sung: “Tell, ye celestial powers, how first the gods and world were made; the rivers, and the boundless sea, with its strong surge. Also, the bright, shining stars, and wide-stretched heaven above, and all the gods that sprang from them, givers of good things.” The Muses answer: “First of all existed chaos; next in order the broad-bosomed Earth; then Love appeared, the most beautiful of immortals. From chaos sprang Erebus and dusky night, and from night and Erebus came Ether and smiling day.”

He gives a further description, which, like the foregoing, we know to be fiction, yet to contain elements of truth. We are not asked to believe all. He says:

“Look up, and view the immense expanse of heaven,

The boundless Ether in his genial arms

Clasping the earth. Him callest thou

God and Jove.”

It is no easy matter for a man of ordinary education to form a notion of the mental crudeness of the lower type of the human race of our own times; it is far more difficult for him to divest his mind of all its acquisitions through study and observation, and reduce his ideas to the level of those progenitors of his race, the men of antiquity.

When men had to struggle with savage beasts, it required superior intelligence to preserve themselves from destruction. That might have led to the worship of the strongest animals, such as the lion and the tiger. But no sooner did man learn the use of iron, which enabled him to kill these his gods, proving himself superior to the thing he worshiped, than these gods were thrown aside.

So long as man was unable to explain the mysterious appearances of the sun, moon, and stars, he endowed them with his own intelligence. He worshiped what was to him incomprehensible, mighty, wonderful; made images representing their phenomena or forces for his adoration. In his mind he pictured the sun as a warrior clad in golden panoply, the pale moon he regarded as the queen, and the stars as an immense host of spirits and heroes. Some interpreted the sun to be the child of darkness, the morning the bride of heaven, the clouds a fairy network, and the heat a friend of man; when the heat was very intense, then the sun was slaying his children. They would liken the dark clouds which rested on the earth to a terrible being whom they named the Snake or Dragon, that shut up the waters in his prisonhouse. When the thunder rolled they said that this hateful monster was uttering his hard riddles; and when, at last, the rain burst forth, they said that the bright sun had slain his enemy, and brought the stream of life for the thirsting earth.

Professor Max Müller says: “He begins to lift up his eyes; he stares at the tent of heaven, and asks, Who supports it? He opens his ears to the winds, and asks them, Whence and whither? He is awakened from darkness and slumber by the light of the sun, and him whom his eyes cannot behold, and who seems to grant him the daily pittance of his existence, he calls his life, his health, his brilliant Lord and Protector. He gives names to all the powers of nature.”

All sorts of names were invented to designate any particular force, phenomenon, or characteristic. In the Vedas the sun has twenty different names, each one descriptive of the sun or its aspect. In Persia the blazing sun was adored, and altars smoked perpetually of fire. In Gaul and Britain pillars were raised to the sun, altars to the moon, and fires were heaped under sacrificial caldrons to Cardwen, the earth-goddess.

Man’s ideas of course underwent modifications as civilization advanced. The religious idea had taken root and elaborated ramifications, and laws were evolved to govern them. The sun of prosperity shone; communities grew stronger and more numerous; from the worship of the physical laws of nature, the laws governing morality became involved. Thus morals invaded nations, over which they enthroned their gods. Every nation elaborated its own details, and slowly took its relative position. As these gods grew in importance men assumed the responsibility to guard them, and the function to attend them. Thus a class called priests were chosen, elected, or self-appointed to minister to them. These functionaries at the same time assumed the moral and political guidance of nations or communities, and individuals. In this manner arose hundreds upon hundreds of Gods: Io, Isis, Jupiter, Juno, etc., etc.

The qualities of the gods, like the qualities of men, were good and bad. They were good and evil, light and dark, life and death, and were arranged to suit the time and occasion. When laws were established to govern society, obedience to these laws was declared to be right, disobedience wrong. Men learned this; they became conscious of what was right and what was wrong. The ministration to these gods was acknowledged to be a righteous act. Rules were established to prevent any violation or infringement of the duty due to these gods. A trespass in violation of anything considered sacred was regarded as an evil—a sin. Slowly the consciousness of sin, of doing wrong, of violating the law, was recognized and established, and the attitude men assumed towards the gods, or their conduct towards them, was regarded as moral holiness, sanctity, or piety. The evolution of images, idols, gods and goddesses, was not the work of a day, but of very many centuries. The same may be said of sacrifices, worship, ceremonies, the laws concerning the same, holiness, sin, good and evil, sanctity, sacrilege, divinity, blasphemy, etc., etc.

Theologians, as well as theological philosophers and theorists, finding their pet notion of a god strangely interfered with and disturbed by the advancing progress in the knowledge of the natural sciences, bring to their aid additional proof to demonstrate the existence of a god, viz., that all races of men, wherever found, savage, barbarian, Indian, African, etc., on the different parts of the earth’s surface, believe in a something higher and greater or more powerful than themselves, a spirit, a soul, a supernatural being. Unfortunately for their argument, this mental condition that is ascribed to the barbarians, etc., as being instinctive or innate—that is, this supernatural element—this having an idea of something they do not understand—proves the contrary, that there is no truth in their assumption. The very fact that they have gone through that process, or are going through it, shows it a kind of educational distemper of a lower order that all primitive races have to pass. As children who learn to read must first know their A B C, it is the road that leads to a higher grade of thought. They begin in surprise and wonder at the natural, concerning which they know nothing. They fear, they adore the forces they cannot overcome. They make images of them in their likeness and worship them. When, however, they have learned through experience to overpower them, they cease to respect them. New forms are adopted, modifications made, and lastly so changed that but a mere shadow of the original remains.

All races began in a similar fashion, varying in form and method. The sun, clouds, atmosphere, seasons, oceans, thunder, and all other phenomena in nature—the inability to account for the existence of these led to worship, sacrifice, etc.; and images, idols, gods, originated; and in connection with them, stories, fables, myths, and fictions were supplied by the officiating priests or persons in attendance. The fanciful creations of the imagination hold good and will hold good so long as we do not know anything of the realities of life, of nature, of the actualities, of facts, of truth. But when the masses shall have learned more of nature, then the visionary, the imaginary god, the heirloom and heritage of our antiquated forefathers, will be thrown aside as the images were by Abraham, the idols dismissed or discarded later. The relics, the remnants, of this barbarism still have a hold on the minds of men.

Our entire religious fabric rests upon the creation as related in the Bible, handed down to us as the universally acknowledged text-book of all knowledge. The time was when it was dangerous to doubt, and imperiled one’s safety or even life to openly state an opinion contrary to the supposed infallible assertions contained in the holy book.

The man or men who originally wrote that part of Genesis had not the remotest idea what he or they were talking about. He or they knew nothing of the subject-matter in consideration. The story told is like many other fables that had their origin in those early days of waking humanity.

The great masses are not very much better off to-day as regards these notions. They still believe in the Bible, and hang their hopes of salvation on its truth. The churches teach it, and it forms part and parcel of the church creed.

It will therefore do no harm to present a few facts—that the holiest priest cannot contradict, that the most pious preacher must admit—that admit of no argument or controversy, because absolutely true.

Every intelligent person knows that we live on this earth; that this earth is also called the world, and that this world is a planet; that this planet belongs to a family of planets. This planet of ours, this earth, belongs to a system of planets known as the solar system. And the solar system is mainly comprised within the limits of the Zodiacs. By the Zodiacs is meant a belt of the Celestial Sphere. 8° on each side of the Ecliptic is styled the Zodiac. This division is of very high antiquity, having been in use among the Hindoos and Egyptians. The Zodiac is divided into twelve equal parts, of 30° each, called signs, to each of which a fanciful name is given.

The sun is the center. Around him the planets revolve in ellipses.

The sun itself has a diameter of 866,000 miles. The major planets revolving around the sun as far as known are as follows:

It is not an easy matter to imagine that we are suspended in space; being held up, not by any visible object, but in accordance with the laws of universal gravitation, whereby each planet attracts every other planet and is in turn attracted by all.

There are a number of minor planets, satellites, a moon, and meteors or shooting-stars, and comets, etc., etc.

The sun, the great central globe, is so vast as to overcome the attraction of all the planets, and compel them to circle around him; next we come to the planets, each turning on its axis while it flies around the sun in an elliptical orbit; then accompanying them are the satellites or moons, each revolving about its own planet, while all whirl in a dizzy waltz about the central orb; next the comets, rushing across the planetary orbits at irregular intervals of time and space; and finally shooting-stars or meteors, darting hither and thither, interweaving all in apparently inextricable confusion. To make the picture more wonderful still, every member is flying with an inconceivable velocity, and yet with such accuracy that the solar system is the most perfect timepiece known.

The moon’s distance from the earth is 239,000 miles; and it has a diameter of 2,160 miles.

The above gives some idea of the immensity of the solar system. And it is but one of the myriads of systems, and our earth a speck amidst it. If on a clear night we cast our eyes upwards, we behold a belt of closely dotted stars extending across the sky—the Milky Way. This galaxy, a luminous, cloudlike band, stretches across the heavens in a great circle, and contains myriads of stars, densely crowded together. Herschel remarks that 288,000 stars once passed across the field of his great reflector in forty-one minutes, and says: “Thus we are to think of our own sun as a star of the second or third magnitude, and of our little solar system as plunged far into the midst of the vortex of worlds, a mere atom along that

“ ‘Broad and ample road

Whose dust is gold and pavement stars.’ ”

CHAPTER II.

THE EARTH.

This earth we live on is a planet, and belongs to the solar system of planets. It shines brightly, and appears to other worlds as other planets do to us. It is nearly 25,000 miles in circumference, and has a diameter of a little over 8,000 miles. It is five and a half times denser than water, and weighs about 6,096,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons.

The atmosphere that surrounds this earth is like a shell that is two hundred to three hundred or more miles in thickness. We live at the bottom of an immense ocean of gaseous matter, which envelops everything, and presses upon everything with a force which appears, at first, perfectly incredible, but whose actual amount admits of easy proof. Gravity being, so far as is known, common to all matter, it is natural to expect that gases, being material substances, should be acted upon by the earth’s attraction, as well as solids and liquids. This is really the case, and the result is the weight or pressure of the atmosphere, which is nothing more than the effect of the attraction of the earth on the particles of air. The amount of pressure exerted upon every square inch of the surface of the earth, and the objects thereon, is from fourteen to fifteen pounds. This enormous force is borne without inconvenience by the animal frames, by reason of its perfect uniformity in every direction; and it may be doubled, or even tripled, without inconvenience. An important law which connects the volume occupied by a gas with the pressure made upon it, is expressed by Mariotte in the following manner. This law is usually called Mariotte’s law: “The volume of gas is inversely as the pressure; the density and elastic force are directly as the pressure, and indirectly as the volume.”

This law has been found to be true no matter how rarefied the air.

The atmosphere, like everything else on earth or connected therewith, and like all other planets known, and the earth itself, is composed of elements, as we shall see presently.

The atmospheric air is composed of gases, elementary substances, known by the names of Nitrogen and Oxygen, with variable proportions of carbonic acid and watery vapors, and usually a trace of ammonia. Besides these, there may occasionally be other substances present, depending upon local causes, as the odoriferous principles of plants and the miasmata of marshes, etc., etc.

Nearly three-fourths of the atmosphere is composed of nitrogen, while about one-fourth or less is oxygen. The following is the relative proportion:

Its specific gravity is unity (1), being the standard with which the density of all gaseous substances is compared. It is 814 times lighter than water, and nearly 11,065 times lighter than mercury; 100 cubic inches weigh 31 grains.

Oxygen is necessary to combustion, to the respiration of animals, and to various other natural operations, by all of which that gas is withdrawn from the air. It is obvious that its quantity would gradually diminish, unless the tendency of these causes were counteracted by some compensating process. This, to some considerable extent, is accomplished by vegetation, as it is found that healthy plants, under the influence of the sun’s light, constantly draw carbonic acid from the air, the carbon of which is retained, while the oxygen is returned.

The atmosphere becomes less and less dense from the surface of the earth upwards.

Animals and vegetables exist in this atmosphere. They cannot exist in any other. All living things and beings live on this earth’s crust. Vegetables are fixed to the soil of this earth, while animals move freely upon it.

The earth’s crust.—Sir Charles Lyell speaking of this earth’s crust says: “By the ‘earth’s crust’ is meant that small portion of the surface of our planet which is accessible to human observation, or on which we are enabled to reason by observations made at or near the surface. These reasonings may extend to a depth of several miles, perhaps ten miles; and even then it may be said that such a thickness is no more than 1⁄400​ part of the distance from the surface to the center. The remark is just, but although the dimensions of such a crust are, in truth, insignificant when compared with the entire globe, yet they are vast and of magnificent extent in relation to man and to the other organic beings which people our globe. Referring to this standard of magnitude, the geologist may admire the ample limits of his domain, and admit at the same time that not only the exterior of the planet, but the entire earth, is but an atom in the midst of the countless worlds surveyed by the astronomer.

“The solid part of this earth consists of distinct substances, such as clay, chalk, sand, limestone, coal, slate, granite, and the like. It has been imagined that the various deposits on the earth’s surface were created in their present form and in their present position. On the contrary, it has been shown that they have acquired their actual configuration and condition gradually, under a variety of circumstances, and at successive periods, during each of which distinct races of living beings have flourished on the land and in the waters, the remains of these creatures still lying buried in the crust of the earth.

“The materials of this crust are not thrown together confusedly; but distinct mineral masses called rock are found to occupy definite spaces and to exhibit a certain order of arrangement. These rocks are divided into four great classes by reference to their different origin, or in other words by reference to the different circumstances and causes by which they have been produced.

“The first two divisions, which will at once be understood as natural, are the aqueous and volcanic, or the products of water and those of igneous action at or near the surface.… The aqueous rocks, sometimes called sedimentary or fossiliferous, cover a larger part of the earth’s surface than any other. These rocks are stratified, or divided into distinct layers or strata; these strata have been generally spread out by the action of water, like what we daily see taking place near the mouth of rivers or on the land during a temporary inundation.

“The remains of animals, especially of aquatic species, are found almost everywhere, imbedded in stratified rocks; and sometimes, in the case of limestone, they are in such abundance as to constitute the entire mass of rock itself. Shells and corals are the most frequent, and with them are often associated the bones and teeth of fishes, fragments of wood, impressions of leaves, and other organic substances.

“When geology was first cultivated, it was a general belief that those marine shells and other fossils were the effects and proofs of the deluge of Noah; but all those who have carefully investigated the phenomena have rejected this doctrine. A transient flood might be supposed to leave behind it, here and there upon the surface, scattered heaps of mud and sand and shingle, with shells confusedly intermixed; but the strata containing fossils are not superficial deposits, and do not simply cover the earth, but constitute the entire mass of mountains. Ample proof of these reiterated revelations is given, and it will be seen that many distinct sets of sedimentary strata, each several hundreds or thousands of feet thick, are piled one upon the other in the earth’s crust, each containing peculiar fossil animals and plants, which are distinguishable, with few exceptions, from species now living. The mass of some of these strata consists almost entirely of corals, others are made up of shells, others of plants turned into coal, while some are without fossil.

“Volcanic rocks are those which have been produced at or near the surface, whether in ancient or modern times, not by water, but by the action of fire or subterranean heat. These rocks are for the most part unstratified, and are devoid of fossils.

“There are two other divisions of rock, called Plutonic rocks, granite, etc., and Metamorphic, or stratified crystalline rocks. The members of both these divisions of rocks agree in being highly crystalline and destitute of organic remains.

“The composition of the aqueous rocks, mineral composition of strata: These may be said to belong principally to three divisions, as follows:

“1. Arenaceous or siliceous rocks. Beds of loose sand frequently met with, of which the grains consist entirely of silex, which term comprehends all purely siliceous minerals, as quartz and common flint. Quartz is silex in its purest form; flint usually contains some admixture of alumina and the oxide of iron. Silica is the mineral used in the manufacture of glass, mixed with a little potassium oxide and lime, or lead, etc.

“2. Argillaceous rock. A mixture of silex or flint with a large proportion, usually about one-fourth, of alumina or argil; but in common language, any earth which possesses sufficient ductility, when kneaded up with water, to be fashioned like paste by the hand or by the potter’s lathe, is called clay. Such clays vary greatly in their composition. They are, in general, nothing more than mud derived from the decomposition or wearing down of various rocks. The purest clay in nature is porcelain clay or kaolin, which results from the decomposition of a rock composed of feldspar and quartz, and it is almost always mixed with quartz. (The kaolin of China consists of 71.15 parts of silex, 15.86 of alumina, 1.92 of lime, and 6.73 of water.)… One general character of all argillaceous rocks is to give out a peculiar, earthy odor when breathed upon, which is a test of the presence of alumina.

“3. Calcareous Rocks. These consist mainly of chalk—lime and carbonic acid. Shells and corals also are formed of the same elements, with the addition of animal matter. Any limestone which is sufficiently hard to take a fine polish is called marble. Many of these are fossiliferous; but statuary marble, which is also called saccharine limestone, as having a texture resembling that of loaf-sugar, is devoid of fossil. Siliceous limestone is an intimate mixture of carbonate of lime and flint, and is harder in proportion as the flinty matter predominates. Marl slate bears the same relation to marl which shale bears to clay, being calcareous shale. Magnesian limestone is composed of carbonate of lime and carbonate of magnesia; the proportion of the latter amounting in some cases to nearly one-half. It effervesces much more slowly and feebly with acid than common limestone. Gypsum is a rock composed of sulphuric acid, lime, and water. It is usually a soft whitish-yellow rock, with a texture resembling loaf-sugar, but sometimes it is entirely composed of lenticular crystals. Alabaster is a granular and compact variety of gypsum found in masses large enough to be used in sculpture and architecture. It is sometimes a pure snow-white substance. It is a softer stone than marble and more easily wrought.”

When geologists examine the earth’s crust, they usually commence with the surface on which we live, and search downwards as far as possible. Lyell constructed a tabular view of the fossiliferous strata.

It must be borne in mind that we have no other methods of ascertaining the truth than by close observation, making diligent search, in order to discover what this earth’s crust is made of. We have no supernatural facilities to give us information, and we are very certain there never were any. What information we are reckoned to have, handed down by our antiquated barbarian forefathers, is of a different nature. It refers—briefly stated—to the conduct of Man, the manner in which he shall act as an individual, or collectively as a community; including a great number of what are considered now theatrical or mountebank ceremonies, fancy customs, sacrifices, and a repetition of certain phrases, ordinarily called prayers, accompanied by illustrative images and pictures, and movements of body—fantastic symbols and devices created and prescribed by man.

Having no other means of ascertaining facts, man was naturally compelled to search for testimony in the earth’s crust—to discover what it is composed of; the kind of material; how it was formed; the time it took to form; the period that elapsed between formations; how the layers or strata were superposed one upon another; what substances were found in them; where organic life was first found; what it consisted of; when man first appeared. By examining this table we get a glimpse of the true state of things. This shows the order of superposition, or chronological succession, of the principal European groups:

I. Post-Tertiary. A. Post-Pliocene.

Periods and Groups.

1. Recent. Peat mosses, shell marls, with bones of land animals, human remains and works of art. Newer parts of modern deltas and coral reefs.

2. Post-Pliocene. Clay, marl, volcanic trap. All the shell of living specimens. No human remains or works of art. Bones of quadrupeds, partly of extinct species.

II. Tertiary. B. Pliocene.

3. Newer Pliocene. Boulder formation. Cavern formation, or Pleistocene. Three-fourths of fossil shells of extinct species. A majority of the mammals extinct; but the genera corresponding with those now surviving in the same great geographical and zoological provinces. Icebergs frequent in the seas; glaciers on hills of moderate height.

4. Older Pliocene. A third or more of the species of mollusca extinct. Nearly, if not all, the mammalia extinct.

C. Miocene.

5. Miocene. About two-thirds of the species of shells extinct. All the mammalia extinct.

D. Eocene.

6.	Upper Eocene.		Fossil shells of the Eocene period, with very few exceptions, extinct. All the mammaliaof extinct species, and the greater part of them of extinct genera. Plants of UpperEocene indicating a south European or Mediterranean climate; those of Lower Eocenea tropical climate.
7.	Middle Eocene.
8.	Lower Eocene.

III. Secondary. E. Cretaceous—Upper.

9. Maestricht beds. Yellowish-white limestone. Large marine saurians, etc.

10. Upper white chalk. Marine limestone composed in part of decomposed corals.

11. Lower white chalk.

12. Upper green sand.

13. Gault. Dark-blue marl at base of chalk escarpment. Numerous extinct genera—conchiferous cephalopoda, etc.

14. Lower green sand. Species of shells, etc., nearly all distinct from those of Upper Cretaceous.

F. Wealden.

15. Weald clay, of fresh-water origin. Shells of Pulmoniferous mollusca.

16. Hastings sand. Fresh water. Reptiles of, etc.

17. Purbeck beds. Limestone, calcareous slate, etc. Roots of trees; plants, etc.

G. Oölite.

18. Upper Oölite. Portland building-stone, sand.

19. Middle Oölite. Oxford clay, dark-blue clay. Large saurians.

20. Lower Oölite. Preponderance of ganoid fish. Plants chiefly cycads, conifers, and ferns.

H. Lias.

21. Argillaceous limestone, marl clay. Mollusca, reptiles, and fish analogous to the Oölitic.

I. Trias.

22. Upper Trias. Red, gray, green, blue, and white marls, and sandstone, with gypsum. Batrachian reptiles.

23. Middle Trias. Compact grayish limestone, with beds of muschelkalk, of dolomite and gypsum.

24. Lower Trias. Plants different for the most part.

IV. Primary. J. Permian.

25. Upper Permian. Yellow magnesian limestone. Organic remains both animal and vegetable, more allied to primary than to secondary period.

26. Lower Permian. Marl slate. Thecodont saurians, heterocercal fish, etc.

K. Carboniferous.

27. Coal measures. Great thickness of strata of fluvio-marine origin, with beds of coal of vegetable origin, based on soils retaining roots of trees. Oldest of known reptiles. Sauroid fish.

28. Mountain. Carboniferous or mountain limestone. Limestone with marine shells and corals, etc.

L. Devonian.

29. Upper Devonian. Yellow sandstone, paving and roofing stone. Tribe of fish with hard coverings. No reptiles yet known.

30. Lower Devonian. Gray sandstone.

M. Silurian.

31. Upper Silurian. Tilestone. Oldest fossil fish yet discovered. Trilobites, etc.

32. Lower Silurian. Caradoc sandstone, etc. No land plants yet known. Footprints of tortoise, etc.

33. Upper and Lower Cambrian.

SYNOPSIS.

Post-Tertiary.		Tertiary or Cainozoic.		Mesozoic.
Pliocene.
Miocene.
Eocene.
Cretaceous.		Secondary or Mesozoic.
Jurassic.
Triassic.
Permian.		Primary or Paleozoic.		Paleozoic.
Carboniferous.
Devonian.
Silurian.
Cambrian.

The precise chemical action upon the elements composing these various geological formations at different remote periods, is no doubt difficult to ascertain. That there always has been some chemical action going on, and that it is continually going on, is certain. How and to what extent we can judge only from the experience of actual observation in the laboratory.

Mr. Crale remarks: “The whole surface of the land is exposed to chemical action of the air, and of the rainwater with its dissolved carbonic acid, and in colder countries the frost. The disintegrated matter is carried down the slopes during heavy rain; and, to a greater extent than might be supposed, especially in arid districts, by the wind; it is then transported by the streams and rivers, which when rapid deepen their channels and triturate the fragments.” Darwin says: “If the theory be true” (speaking of the time elapsed since the Cambrian lowest formation) “it is indisputable that before the lowest Cambrian stratum was deposited, long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the Cambrian age to the present day; that during these vast periods, the world swarmed with living creatures. Here we encounter a formidable objection; for it seems doubtful whether the earth, in a fit state for the habitation of living creatures, has lasted long enough. Sir W. Thompson concludes that the consolidation of the crust can hardly have occurred less than 20 or more than 400 million years ago, but probably not less than 98 or more than 200 millions of years. These very wide limits show how doubtful the data are; and other elements may have hereafter to be introduced into the problem. Mr. Crale estimates that about 60 million years have elapsed since the Cambrian period, but this, judging from the small amount of organic change since the commencement of the glacial epoch, appears a very short time for the many and great mutations of life, which have certainly occurred since the Cambrian formation; and the previous 140 millions of years can hardly be considered as sufficient for the development of the varied forms of life which already existed during the Cambrian period.”

It seems almost impossible for an ordinary mind to grasp the magnitude of the figures, the span of life being so short. Yet some idea may be formed when we compare the age of this earth’s crust formation, the hundreds of thousands of years that passed in the evolution of man, and the brief space of time that has elapsed since he has become enabled to give an account of himself.

As regards the thickness of the earth’s crust, Professor Ramsey has given the maximum thickness, from actual measurement in most cases, of the successive formations in different parts of Great Britain; and this is the result:

making altogether 72,584 feet; that is, very nearly thirteen and three-quarters British miles. Büchner in his work on “Force and Matter” states: “The so-called coal formation alone required, according to Bischoff, 1,000,177 years; according to Chevandier’s calculation, 672,788 years. The Tertiary strata required for their development about 350,000 years; and before the originally incandescent earth could cool down from a temperature of 2,000 degrees to 200, there must, according to Bischoff’s calculation, have elapsed a period of 350,000,000 years. Valger calculates that the time required for the deposit of the strata known to us must at least have amounted to 648,000,000 years. I quote these figures simply to show how difficult it is, and the labor required, to form even a proximate idea as to the period of time that must have elapsed for the formation of the various strata known.

That all animals were not created at once is certain beyond all cavil and dispute. The development of the various forms of life was an exceeding slow process, and lasted very many thousand centuries. That the earth’s crust was not at certain stages of formation in a fit condition either to receive or to maintain the higher types of animal life, is well known. And we know that man’s remains are found only in the uppermost surface of the earth’s crust. Max Müller says in his “Testimony of the Rocks”: “It was not until the earlier ages of the Oölite system had passed away, that the class of Reptiles received its fullest development. And certainly very wonderful was the development which it did then receive. Reptiles became everywhere the lords and masters of the lower world. When any class of air-breathing vertebrates is very largely developed, we find it taking possession of all three terrestrial elements—earth, air, and water. Last of all, the true placental mammals appear, and thus, tried by the test of perfect reproduction, the great vertebral division receives its full development.” Agassiz’s “Principles of Zoology” says: “We distinguish four ages of nature, comprehending the great geological divisions, namely:

“1. The Primary, or Paleozoic age, comprising the lower Silurian, the upper Silurian, and the Devonian. During this age there were no air-breathing animals. The fishes were masters of creation. We may therefore call it the Reign of Fishes.

“2. The Secondary age, comprising the Carboniferous, the Trias, the Oölite, and the Cretaceous formations. This is the epoch in which air-breathing animals first appear. The Reptiles predominated over the other classes, and we may therefore call it the ‘Reign of Reptiles.’

“3. The Tertiary age, comprising the Tertiary formation. During this age terrestrial mammals of great size abound. This is the Reign of Mammals.

“4. The Modern age, characterized by the appearance of the most perfect of created beings.”

The majority of mankind trouble themselves but little whether progress is made in any one of the branches of science or not. Man has no time to think seriously of anything except to provide food for his family. The priest does his thinking, and he is made to contribute part of his labor to support the holy man who does the thinking for him. All he knows is that his soul or his spirit, his hereafter, and his God are well cared for, and he pays for it. Yet every man ought to understand that all his rights, civil and political—all the freedom he enjoys—he has to thank science for procuring and securing.

“Shall it be seriously objected to the application of the sciences to philosophical problems that its results are not agreeable? That the truth is not always agreeable, nor always consolatory, nor always religious, nor always acceptable, is as well known as the old experience of the almost total absence of reward, either external or internal, provided for its exemplars. What this or that man may understand by a governing reason, an absolute power, a universal soul, a personal God … is his own affair. The theologians, with their articles of faith, must be left to themselves; so of the naturalists with their science; they both proceed by different routes.… The same bloody hatred with which science was once persecuted by religious fanaticism would revive now, and with it the Inquisition and Auto-da-fé, and all the horrors with which a refined zealotism has tortured humanity would be resorted to, to satisfy the wishes of the theological cutthroats. A man in advance of his age beholds the struggle of the contending parties from a high point of view, and sees in the eccentricities of this contest merely the natural and necessary expression of the opposing elements which agitate our time. No one can doubt that truth will finally emerge the victor. It certainly will not be long before the battle becomes general. Is the victory doubtful? The struggle is unequal; the opponents cannot stand against the trenchant arm of physical and physiological Materialism, which fights with facts, that everyone can comprehend, while the opponents fight with suppositions and presumptions” (Büchner).

“Science and faith exclude each other” (Virchow).

Fools still cling to faith; wise men find the truth in science.

Note.—Baily’s “History of Astronomy,” Part I, page 31, § 124, and Part II, pp. 33, 39, maintains that India has existed as a nation, as the records show, 4,320,000 years. The Indians divide this time into four principal periods: First period, that of innocence or simplicity, 1,728,000 years; second period, 276,000; the third period, 864,000; and the ages of misfortune about 422,000—Cali-yon-gan period. Similar statements are made by Cicero (“De Divinat,” I, 19), concerning the Chaldeans: “Condemnemus, inquam, hos aut stultitiæ aut vanitatis aut imprudentiæ qui 470 millia annorum ut ipsi dicunt monumentis comprehensa continent.”

THE ATMOSPHERE.

The atmosphere is the gaseous envelope encircling the earth; and it constitutes the ocean of air at the bottom of which we live. We become aware of the existence of the air when we move rapidly and experience the resistance offered to the passage of our bodies, and also when the air is set in motion, giving rise to a wind. We notice the pressure of the atmosphere if we withdraw the air from beneath the hand by a powerful air-pump, for we then find that the hand is pressed down with a force equal to 1.033 kilos. on a square centimeter, or nearly 15 lbs. on every square inch. The total atmospheric pressure which the human body has to support hence amounts to several tons. But this pressure is not felt under ordinary circumstances, because the pressure exercised is exerted equally in every direction. The instrument used for measuring the pressure of the air is termed a barometer, and the average pressure at the sea level is equal to that exerted by a column of mercury 760 mm. high. The air being elastic and having weight, it is clear the lower layers of air must be more compressed than those above them, and hence the density of the air must vary at the different hights above the sea level. The density of the air being thus dependent on the pressure to which it is subjected, the higher strata of air become generally rarefied, and it is hence difficult to say whereabouts the air ceases, but it appears that the limit of the atmosphere is about 200 to 300 miles from the level of the sea. If the whole atmosphere were of the same density throughout as it is at the earth’s surface, it would reach only to a height of a little more than five miles above the sea level.

Aqueous vapor is contained in the air in quantities varying in different localities and at different times, and depending mainly on the temperature of the air. Air at a given temperature cannot contain more than a certain quantity of moisture in solution; and when it has taken up its maximum quantity, it is said to be saturated with aqueous moisture. The higher the temperature of the air the more water can it retain as vapor; and when air saturated with moisture is cooled, the water is deposited in liquid form in very small globules, forming a mist, fog, or cloud. This is the cause of the fall of rain, snow, and hail; when warm air heavily laden with moisture from the ocean passes into a higher and colder position, or meets with a stratum of air of lower temperature, it cannot any longer retain so much aqueous vapor, and a large quantity assumes a liquid form, falling as rain when the temperature is above the freezing-point, or crystallizing as snowflakes if the temperature is below that point. Hail is caused by the congelation of raindrops in passing through a stratum of air below the freezing-point. The deposition of dew is caused by the rapid cooling of the earth’s surface by radiation after sunset, and by the consequent cooling of the air near the ground below the temperature at which it begins to deposit moisture. In general the air contains from 50 to 70 per cent. of aqueous vapor of the quantities necessary to saturate it. If the quantity be not within these limits the air is either unpleasantly dry or unpleasantly moist.

The air contains, besides the gases of oxygen and nitrogen, carbonic acid, ammonia, accidental impurities, and volatile organic matter, which latter is the most important, as it probably influences to a great extent the healthfulness of the special situation. We become aware of the existence of such organic putrescent substances when entering a crowded room from the fresh air; and it is probable that the well-known unhealthiness of marshy and other districts is owing to the presence of some organic impurities.

We may have occasion to refer to this when speaking of the deluge, etc.

CHAPTER III.

THE CHEMICAL ASPECT.

By the word chemistry we understand the science which investigates the composition of all material substances, taking them apart or separating them, by a chemical process, and discovers the nature and properties of the minutest particle. These small particles have received the name, elements or elementary substances; that term is applied in chemistry to those forms of matter which have hitherto resisted all attempt to decompose them.

“We know that we have earth, air, water, and we have seen in Chapter II that the earth’s crust is made up of many substances, rocks, coral reefs, clay, marl, feldspar, quartz, limestone, granite, etc., etc. These substances are composed of small particles, or elements, and are called minerals or inorganic substances. There is another class of substances, called organic, that are derived from living things or beings. These are also taken apart or separated into their elementary substances. As plants or animals, all such elementary substances have received the name organic substances because plants and animals have organs of reproduction, hence the name.

The taking apart of any substance into its constituent elements is called analysis by chemists.

The same elements can also be put together to produce various substances; that is termed synthesis.

Chemists have adopted a name for each of the elements, and these names are represented by symbols, or letters.

Compound substances may contain two or more elements. When the composition of a substance is determined by splitting the compound into its elementary constituents a chemical analysis of that substance is said to have been made; and if the proportions by weight in which each of the constituents is present be determined, a quantitative analysis of the substance has been made, etc.

By chemical action, we signify that which occurs when two or more substances so act upon one another as to produce a third substance differing altogether from the original ones in properties; or when a substance is brought under such conditions that it forms two or more bodies differing from the original one in properties. Chemistry is called an experimental science. In investigating all the materials within his reach, whether solid, liquid, or gaseous, whether contained in the earth, sea, or air; whether belonging to the mineral, animal, or vegetable creation, the chemist finds himself obliged to divide substances into two classes: (1) compound substances—those which he is able to split up into two or more essentially different materials; (2) elements or simple substances—those which he is unable thus to split up, and out of which nothing essentially different from the original substances has been obtained.

Compound bodies are made up of two or more elementary substances chemically combined with each other; thus sulphur, copper, lead, are elementary bodies; out of each of these nothing different from sulphur, copper, lead, can be obtained; whereas when two of these bodies are heated together, a compound is formed from which both of the original elementary constituents can at any time be obtained. Water is a compound body—it can be split up into two elementary gases, hydrogen and oxygen; common salt, again, is a compound of a gas (chlorine) with a metal (sodium); and limestone, clay, sugar, and wax may serve as examples of compound bodies; whilst phosphorus, charcoal, iron, mercury, and gold may be mentioned as belonging to the class of simple substances.

As to physical properties of gases—they have weight, volume, diffusion, density, etc.

Theologians insist that there is a God, a God that was first introduced to us by a man with the name of Abraham, advertised by Moses, and has been palmed off upon the masses as a something exceedingly wonderful. A multitude of men who find it to their interest to advocate his pretended claims, are still doing their utmost to sustain their God. We are trying to discover where he is to be found, whether he is a local or a universal God, what he is composed of, whether he resides on earth permanently or transiently, whether he controls the entire solar system or more systems, whether he occasionally takes a trip to other planets; and if he has created everything we want to find out how he has created it. For that reason we have to search, taking a glimpse among the stars, in the earth, atmosphere, etc. Since geology does not respond favorably, we are trying to discover what this earth is composed of. The elementary bodies at present recognized amount to sixty-four in number. Of these about fifty belong to the class called metals. Several of them are of recent discovery, and as yet very imperfectly known. The distinction between metals and certain non-metallic substances or metalloids, although very convenient for purposes of description, is entirely arbitrary, since the classes graduate into each other in the most indefinite manner. The following is a complete list of the elementary substances known, giving their names, symbols, and combining weight:

			Symbols.	METALLOIDS.	Combining Weight.
Elements of life: of primary importance.			O	Oxygen	[1]II	16
			H	Hydrogen	I	1
			N	Nitrogen	V	14
			C	Carbon	IV	12
Elements of secondary importance.			Cl	Chlorine	I	35	.5
			Br	Bromine	I	80
			I	Iodine	I	127
			F	Fluorine	I	29
			P	Phosphorus	V	31
			S	Sulphur	VI	32
			Si	Silicon	IV	28
			B	Boron	III	11
			Se	Selenium	VI	79	.5
			Te	Tellurium	VI	179
Mechanics, arts, science, and medicine.			Al	Aluminium	IV	27	.4
			Ca	Calcium	II	40
		(Cuprum)	Cu	Copper	II	63	.5
		(Ferrum)	Fe	Iron	IV	56
		(Plumbum)	Pb	Lead	IV	207
			Mn	Manganese	IV	55
		(Hydrargyrum)	Hg	Mercury	II	200
		(Kalium)	K	Potassium	I	39	.1
		(Argentum)	Ag	Silver	I	108
		(Natrium)	Na	Sodium	I	23
		(Stannum)	Sn	Tin	IV	118
			Zn	Zinc	II	65	.3
		(Stibium)	Sb	Antimony	V	122
			As	Arsenic	V	75
			Ba	Barium	II	137
			Bi	Bismuth	V	210
			Cr	Chromium	VI	52	.2
			Co	Cobalt	IV	58	.7
		(Aurum)	Au	Gold	III	197
			In	Indium	IV	74
			Mg	Magnesium	II	24
			Ni	Nickel	IV	58	.7
			Pd	[2]Palladium	IV	106	.6
			Pt	Platinum	IV	197	.5
			Sr	Strontium	II	87	.5
			Ti	Titanium	IV	50
			W	Tungsten	VI	184
			U	Uranium	IV	120
Little known, rarely used.			Be	Beryllium	II	9	.3
			Cd	Cadmium	II	112
			Cs	Cæsium	I	133
			Cr	Cerium	IV	92
			D	Didymium	II	95
			E	Erbium	II	112	.6
			Ir	Iridium	IV	198
			La	Lanthanum	II	92
			Li	[3]Lithium	I	7
			Mo	Molybdenum	VI	96
			Nb	Niobium	V	94
			Os	Osmium	IV	199	.2
			Rh	Rhodium	IV	104	.4
			Rb	Rubidium	I	85	.4
			Ru	Ruthenium	IV	104	.4
			Ta	Tantalum	V	182
			Tb	Terbium
			Tl	Thallium	III	204
			Th	Thorium	II	231	.5
			V	Vanadium	V	51	.3
			Y	Yttrium	II	61
			Zr	Zirconium	III	89	.6

All matter is made up of very small particles which are chemically indivisible and which are termed atoms, and the atom of each elementary substance differs essentially from that of every other. All the atoms of each element are alike, and chemical compounds are formed by the combination of unlike atoms. Hence the smallest particle of a compound consists of a group of atoms. This group, which can be divided by chemical but not by mechanical means, is termed a molecule. The smallest particle of an element in a free state is, however, not a single atom, but a group of atoms mechanically indivisible, or a molecule. This explains why elementary bodies act more energetically and enter more readily into combination at the moment of their liberation from a combination than when in the free state.

When chemical changes occur, it is the molecules which react upon one another, and the change consists in the change of position of certain atoms contained in the groups. When an element is set free from a compound, the liberated join together to form molecules, unless some body is present with which the element can combine.

By an atom we therefore understand the smallest portion of a chemical element which can enter into a chemical compound; by a molecule, the smallest portion of a simple compound body which can occur in the free state or which can take part in a chemical action.

All the elements, with the single exception of fluorine, combine with oxygen to form oxides. In this act of combination, which is termed oxidation, heat is always, and light is frequently, given off. When bodies unite with oxygen, evolving light and heat, they are said to burn, or undergo combustion. All bodies which burn in the air burn with increased brilliancy in oxygen gas; and many substances, such as iron, which do not readily burn in the air, may be made to do so in oxygen.

Oxygen is a colorless invisible gas, possessing neither taste nor smell.

Hydrogen is a colorless invisible gas, possessing neither taste nor smell. It is the lightest gas known, being 14.47 times lighter than air. It combines with oxygen to form water.

Nitrogen is a colorless, tasteless, inodorous gas, slightly lighter than air. It does not combine readily with bodies, and it is a very inert substance, neither supporting combustion or animal life, nor burning itself. It has, however, no poisonous qualities, and animals plunged into a jar of this gas die simply of suffocation from want of oxygen. Nitrogen exists in a free state in the air, of which it constitutes four-fifths by bulk. It occurs combined in the bodies of plants and animals, and in various chemical compounds, such as nitre, whence the gas derives its name.

Carbon is a solid element; it is not known in the free state, either as a liquid or as a gas. Carbon is remarkable as existing in three distinct forms, which in outward appearance or physical properties have nothing in common, whilst their chemical relations are identical. These three allotropic forms of carbon are (1) diamond, (2) graphite or plumbago, (3) charcoal. These substances differ in hardness, color, specific gravity, etc., but they each yield on combustion in the air or oxygen the same weight of the same substance, carbonic acid or carbon dioxide. Carbon is the element which is especially characteristic of animal and vegetable life, as every organized structure, from the simplest to the most complicated, contains carbon. If carbon were not present on the earth, no single vegetable or animal body such as we know could exist. In addition to the carbon which is found free in these three forms, and contained combined with hydrogen and oxygen in the bodies of plants and animals, it exists combined with oxygen as free carbon dioxide in the air, and with calcium and oxygen as calcium carbonate in limestone, chalk, marble, corals, shells, etc. Plants are able when exposed to sunlight to decompose the carbon dioxide in the air, liberating the oxygen, and taking the carbon for the formation of their vegetable structure, whilst all animals, living directly or indirectly upon vegetables, absorb oxygen, and evolve carbon dioxide. Thus the sun’s rays, through the medium of plants, effect deoxidation, or reduction, whilst animals act as oxidizing agents with respect to carbon.

Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Carbon—these are the life-giving elements. They are the life-producing and life-sustaining elements. Neither animal nor vegetable life can exist without them. The entire activity of nature depends upon them. Every organic substance contains them.

No organic substance can exist without them.

The principle of life is due to them.

From a blade of grass to an insect, from an insect to an animal, including man, one cannot emerge into life without these elements.

The birth, growth, and development of plant and animal depend upon them, the sustenance and nurture.

All our food-substances are almost wholly made up of these elements.

No force, power, or energy can be produced without their presence.

Our muscular strength, our nervous force, our very thoughts, our imagination, as well as digestion, respiration, circulation of the blood, depend on these elements.

Our sensations, our pleasures, our pains, depend upon them. All the excitement and depression in life are dependent on them.

The beauties of vegetation, all the various shades and colors of flower and blossom, the tints and odors, are dependent on them.

No phenomenon in nature, no matter how terrible, delightful, or enchanting, can be manifested without these elements.

No earthquake, thunder, storm, lightning, wind, hail, rain, snow, or ice could exist without them.

No light, heat, or motion—in fact, none of the physical forces, could be evolved without them.

Our atmosphere, ocean, seas, rivers, forests, are composed of them.

No art, science, mechanics, architecture, nor indeed anything that we now enjoy, could exist without them.

Gunpowder, dynamite, electricity, and all else are dependent on these elements.

Why attempt to enumerate the extraordinary roles they play on earth and in the universe?

Every plant would wither, every life would perish, without Oxygen; this element may be truly called the breath of life.

The creation of God is dependent on these elements, because were it not for man God would never have been.

The ark, made of wood, was composed of them. The figure of Christ, and the Virgin Mary, as she is called, as well as all the saints, were and are composed of Oxygen, Carbon, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, etc. We know that these chemical elements enter into the composition of all things in nature—mineral, vegetable, animal.

We also may be absolutely certain that no more elements exist now, at this present time, than existed ten, twenty, or one thousand million of years ago.

Chemical elementary substances have no greater relative weight towards one another, nor a greater volume, at this present time than they had at any time since the existence of this earth. The total weight of all elements that enter into the formation of this terrestrial globe has never varied, whether they were in solid, fluid, or gaseous state.

The law of gravitation has always existed.

Elements that enter into the formation of organic beings, vegetable or animal, must in due time undergo decomposition and return to the same elements of which they were composed.

The chemical action has always been the same. All substances are subject to chemical action when exposed to the primary elements, oxygen and hydrogen especially.

An element can never be annihilated.

It may not be out of place to mention some of the substances in daily use. For example, water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen. Air is composed of oxygen and nitrogen. Bread, of starch, sugars—oxygen, hydrogen and carbon. Meats, of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen, etc. Salt, of sodium and chlorine. Vegetables, fruits, etc., of oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen. Fats, of oil. alcohols, of oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen. The tissues of the animal body are composed of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen.

The combination of five elements produces electricity, thus: Zinc (Zn) + copper (Cu) + sulphuric acid, which consists of hydrogen (H₂), sulphur (S), and oxygen (O₄), = electricity.

A few examples in the changes of the combination of oxygen and hydrogen are shown in water. Under conditions of heat and cold it becomes ice, steam, dew, rain, hail, snow, clouds, etc., etc. These phenomena are known.

We merely mention these facts to show how much has been discovered by human skill, but of how much more remains to be discovered we can not form the slightest notion. All that has been done in the field of science has been of actual benefit to humanity. For the discoveries are based on fact and truth. They are ushered into this world to alleviate and to lighten the struggle and the burden of men. They come without oppression, without crime, without bloodshed. They come as the great benefactors of mankind. Men would be much better off to-day if they received for their Sunday lessons instruction in the natural, instead of wasting their precious time in repeating the silly twaddle of supernatural extravagance, that tends to stupefy instead of clearing up the understanding.

Scientific research has advanced so far, that not only are we able to know, from the discoveries made, the elementary composition of this earth, and all that belongs thereto, but other far more difficult problems have been partially solved. That is, with the aid of newly discovered instruments, we can ascertain, to a considerable extent, the elementary composition of the sun, stars, and distant planets.

In 1802 Dr. Wollaston, and later Fraunhofer, discovered and perfected an instrument called the spectroscope. It consists of a prism, fixed upon an iron stand, and a tube carrying a slit. When light passes through a slit it impinges upon a flint glass prism, by which it is dispersed. The light of burning metals has been tested in that manner. Thus when any light passes through the slit of a spectroscope, the substance giving the light may be determined, the elements burning ascertained. If the solar spectrum be examined—the light of the sun’s rays—numerous dark lines parallel with the edge of the prism are observed, and reveal a number of colors giving the following: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. These are intersected by fine black lines of different degrees of breadth and shade, which are always present, and always occupy the same relative position in the solar spectrum. These are called Fraunhofer’s lines. By the means of this instrument, the spectra of the sun, planets, and moon have been analyzed, and the color and position, the kind of metals these distant bodies are composed of. The sun’s atmosphere, from experiments made, is known to contain metals, such as soda, iron, etc., in the condition of glowing gas, the white light proceeding from the solid or liquid strongly heated mass of the sun which lies in the interior. The metals hitherto detected in the sun’s atmosphere are about fifteen or more—iron, sodium, strontium, cadmium, magnesium, calcium, chromium, nickel, barium, zinc, cobalt, manganese, aluminium, titanium, hydrogen, etc.

So delicate is this instrument that 1⁄180000000​ part of a grain of sodium can be detected, and a portion of lithium weighing 1⁄6000000​ part of a grain has been detected; thus showing that there exists a very strong probability that the sun, planets, and moons are composed of similar, if not the same, elements that this earth is composed of.

[1] Explanation.—The Roman numerals placed opposite the above list of elementary substances present the difference or equivalent or saturating power of each element. Hydrogen, for example, is a monad, a simple particle, or atom, or unit. Oxygen is a dyad, represented by II, two. It requires two atoms of hydrogen to saturate one of oxygen, or its equivalent, to form water. A triad, III, requires three monads; a tetrad, IV, four; a pentad, V, five; a sexad, VI, six units or monads, their respective equivalents or saturating power. A monad or monogenic element replaces another one by one. An atom of a polygenic element, that is, a dyad, etc., on the other hand, always takes the place of, or is equivalent to, two or more atoms of a monogenic element. [↑]

[2] Important. [↑]

[3] Exception. [↑]

CHAPTER IV.

THE SUN.

The Colossus, or brazen statue of the Sun, was placed across the mouth of the harbor of Rhodes, its legs stretched to such a distance that a large ship under sail might easily pass between them. It was seventy cubits high, or a hundred English feet; its fingers were as long as ordinary statues, and few men with both arms could grasp one of its thumbs. Scarcely sixty years had elapsed before this work of art was thrown down by an earthquake, which broke it off at the knees, in which position it remained till the conquest of Rhodes by the Saracens (A.D. 684), when it was beaten to pieces and sold to a Jew merchant, who loaded nine hundred camels with its spoils.

Anaxagoras (500 B.C.) taught that there was but one god, and that the sun was only a fiery globe and should not be worshiped. He attempted to explain eclipses and other celestial phenomena by natural causes, saying that there is no such thing as chances, these being only names for unknown laws. For this audacity and impiety, as his countrymen considered it, he and his family were doomed to perpetual banishment. “Man,” said Protagoras of Abra (430 B.C.), “is the measure of all things.… Of the Gods I know nothing, neither whether they be nor whether they be not; for there is much that stands in the way of knowledge, as well the obscurity of the matter as the shortness of human life.”

St. John begins his writings: “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” But John, like many others of his time, knew nothing more than the use of words to make riddles, which he himself could not see through and no one else could understand. The man or men who first composed that part of scripture that informs us how the sun and earth were created, certainly knew nothing about it, because all that is at present known is of comparatively recent date. For many centuries, the established religion, the church, and the representatives of the theo-Christian organization, did all in their power to prevent light from penetrating their hidden benighted doings. They looked upon themselves as being all in all, knowing all in all—as having had everything worth knowing revealed to them by an agency no one else had access to. The ideas of their mysterious doings, of their mysterious Gods, are hidden from view in deep obscurity—like the temple of the Egyptian Isis, that bore the inscription: “I am all that is, that was, and that will be, and no mortal has lifted my veil.”

The ancient writers of the scripture were full of deep, mysterious ways, and their writings of hidden meanings. Ordinary mortals were prohibited from making inquiry because the subject was considered too mysterious, and much too sacred.

Since then, many mysteries have been dissolved, or have been analyzed by the crucial test of science, and it has been discovered that there is nothing hidden except what our ignorance prevents us from knowing. We have lifted the sacred veil and looked into the temple of nature, as she is, and not as she appears. The more we search, the more we discover, the nearer we get to the truth.

There is not the slightest reason why every man, woman, and child at proper age should not be instructed in matters wherein they are immediately interested, the knowledge whereof would undoubtedly be to their benefit.

Men have lived through centuries of fable, ages of fiction, long periods of myth. The Christian God is as much of a myth as any myth that ever existed. Humanity having passed through these various mental afflictions, gone through so many bloody surgical operations, we are, as it were, approaching a condition that will soon be declared as convalescent, and this most miserable of theological nurses may at not a very remote period be dismissed.

We can say, without the slightest conscientious scruple, or fear of contradiction, with reason to sustain us and the light of science to prove the truth, that There is no God.

There never was—except such a one as men have invented, held sacred, and worshiped. There is nothing sacred except what man makes sacred, nothing holy except what man makes holy, nothing divine except what man makes divine. He makes his own God, and he religiously, piously, devoutly prays to and worships it. The more regularly he does so, the more saintly he becomes, or esteems himself.

For many thousand years the Sun was worshiped, held sacred, sacrificed to, entempled, etc. As reason and understanding increased, they forsook him as a god, dismissed him as they had dismissed many gods before him. Yet the sun was by far their greatest benefactor and best friend—more than they were aware of.

The sun is 93,000,000 miles from the earth. Supposing a railway could be built to the sun, an express train traveling day and night, at the rate of thirty miles an hour, would require 352 years to reach its destination. The light of the sun is equal to 5,563 wax candles held at a distance of one foot from the eye. The heat of the sun that we receive annually is sufficient to melt a layer of ice 180 feet thick, extending over the whole earth. Yet the sunbeam is only 1⁄300000​ part as intense as it is at the surface of the sun. Moreover, the heat and light stream off into space equally in every direction. Of this vast flood, but one twenty-three-hundred-millionth part reaches the earth.

The diameter of the sun is about 860,000 miles. Its volume is 1,300,000 times that of the earth, i.e., it would take 1,300,000 earths to make a globe the size of the sun. Its mass is 750 times that of all the planets and moons in the solar system, and 300,000 times that of the earth. Its weight may be expressed in tons thus: 1,910,278,070,000,000,000,000,000,000. The density of the sun is only about one-fourth that of the earth, or 1.41 that of water, so that the weight of a body transferred from the earth to the sun would not be increased in proportion to the comparative size of the sun. The sun rotates on his axis, like a wheel, once in about 25 days.

Our astronomers tell us that the solar heat is gradually diminishing. In time the sun will cease to shine, as the earth did long since. Newcomb says that in 5,000,000 years, at the present rate, the sun will have shrunk to half its present size, and that it cannot sustain life on the earth more than 10,000,000 years longer. Of this we may be assured, there is enough heat to support life on our globe for millions of years to come.

The sun consists of a central orb, liquid or solid, of exceeding brightness, which of itself would give a continuous spectrum, or in other words which emits all kinds of light. The sunlight is decomposed by means of the spectroscope, already alluded to, in order to discover the kind of elements it is composed of. Therefore Tyndall says: “I think we now possess knowledge sufficient to raise us to the level of one of the most remarkable generalizations of our age. It has long been supposed that the sun and planets have had a common origin and that hence the same substances are more or less common to them all. Can we detect the presence of any of our terrestrial substances in the sun?… I have said that the bright bands of a metal are characteristic of the metal; that we can without seeing the metal declare its name from the inspection of the bands. The bands are, so to speak, the voice of the metal declaring its presence.

“Professor Kirchhoff finds iron, calcium, magnesium, sodium, chromium, etc., in the sunlight spectrum. We know also the total amount of solar heat received by the earth in a year, and we can calculate the entire quantity of heat emitted by the sun in a year. Conceive a hollow sphere to surround the sun, its center the sun’s center, and its surface at the distance of the earth from the sun. The section of the earth cut by this surface is to the whole area of the hollow sphere as 1 to 2,300,000,000; hence the quantity of solar heat intercepted by the earth is only 1⁄2300000000​ of the total radiation.

“The heat emitted by the sun, if used to melt a stratum of ice applied to the sun’s surface would liquefy the ice at the rate of 2,400 feet an hour. It would boil per hour 700,000 millions of cubic miles of ice-cold water. Expressed in another form, the heat given out by the sun per hour is equal to that which would be generated by the combustion of a layer of solid coal 10 feet thick entirely surrounding the sun; hence the heat emitted in a year is equal to that which would be produced by the combustion of a layer of coal 17 miles in thickness. These are the results of actual measurements; and should greater accuracy be conferred on them by future determinations, it will not deprive them of their astonishing character. And this expenditure has been going on for ages, without our being able, in historic times, to detect the loss. When the tolling of a bell is heard at a distance, the sound of each stroke soon sinks, the sonorous vibrations are quickly wasted, and renewed strokes are necessary to maintain the sound. Like the bell,

“Die Sonne tönt nach alter weise.

“But how is its tone sustained? How is the perennial loss made good? We are apt to overlook the wonderful in the common. Possibly to many of us—and to some of the most enlightened among us—the sun appears as a fire differing from our terrestrial fires only in the magnitude and the intensity of its combustion. But what is the burning matter which can thus maintain itself? All that we know of cosmical phenomena declares our brotherhood with the sun—affirms that the same constituents enter into the composition of his mass as those already known to chemistry. But no earthly substance with which we are acquainted—no substance which the fall of meteors has landed on the earth—would be at all competent to maintain the sun’s combustion. The chemical energy of such substances would be too weak, and their dissipation would be too speedy. Were the sun a solid block of coal, and were it allowed a sufficient supply of oxygen to enable it to burn at the rate necessary to produce the observed emissions, it would be utterly consumed in 5,000 years. On the other hand, to imagine it a body originally endowed with a store of heat—a hot globe now cooling—necessitates the ascription to it of qualities wholly different from those possessed by terrestrial matter. If we knew the specific heat of the sun, we could calculate its rate of cooling. Assuming this to be the same as that of water—the terrestrial substance which possesses the highest specific heat—at its present rate of emission, the entire mass of the sun would cool down 15,000° Faht. in 5,000 years. In short, if the sun be formed of matter like our own, some means must exist of restoring to him his wasted power. The facts are so extraordinary, that the soberest hypothesis regarding them must appear wild. The sun we know rotates upon his axis; he turns like a wheel once in 25 days: can it be the friction of the periphery of this wheel against something in surrounding space which produces the light and heat? Such a notion has been entertained. But what forms the brake, and by what agency is it held, while it rubs against the sun? The action is inconceivable; but, granting the existence of the brake, we can calculate the total amount of heat which the sun could generate by such friction. We know his mass, we know his time of rotation; we know the mechanical equivalent of heat; and from these data we deduce, with certainty, that the entire force of rotation, if converted into heat, would cover more than one, but less than two, centuries of emission. There is no hypothesis involved in this calculation.

“There is another theory, which, however bold it may at first sight appear, deserves our earnest attention. I have already referred to it as the meteoric theory of the sun’s heat. Solar space is peopled with ponderable objects. Kepler’s celebrated statement that ‘there are more comets in the heavens than fish in the ocean’ refers to the fact that a small portion only of the total number of comets belong to our system, and are seen from the earth. But besides comets, and planets, and moons, a numerous class of bodies belong to our system—asteroids, which from their smallness might be regarded as cosmical atoms. Like the planets and the comets these smaller bodies obey the law of gravity, and revolve in elliptic orbits around the sun; and it is they, when they come within the earth’s atmosphere, that, fired by friction, appear to us as meteors and falling stars. On a bright night twenty minutes rarely pass at any part of the earth’s surface without the appearance of at least one meteor. At certain times (the 12th of August and the 14th of November), they appear in enormous numbers. During nine hours of observation in Boston, when they were described as falling as thick as snowflakes, 240,000 meteors were calculated to have been observed. The number falling in a year might perhaps be estimated at hundreds or thousands of millions, and even these would constitute but a small portion of the total crowd of asteroids that circulate round the sun. From the phenomena of light and heat, and by the direct observation of Encke, on his comet, we learn that the universe is filled with a resisting medium, through the friction of which all the masses of our system are drawn gradually toward the sun. And though the larger planets show, in historic times, no diminution of their periods of revolution, this may not hold good for the smaller bodies. In the time required for the mean distance of the earth from the sun to alter a single yard, a small asteroid may have approached thousands of miles nearer to our luminary.

“Following up these reflections we should infer that while this immeasurable stream of ponderable matter rolls unceasingly towards the sun, it must augment in density as it approaches the center of convergence. And here the conjecture naturally rises that that weak nebulous light, of vast dimensions, which embraces the sun—the Zodiacal light—may owe its existence to these crowded meteors. However this may be, it is at least proved that the luminous phenomenon arises from matter which circulates in obedience to planetary laws; the entire mass constituting the Zodiacal light must be constantly approaching, and incessantly raining its substance down upon, the sun.

“We observe the fall of an apple and investigate the law which rules its motion. In the place of the earth we set the sun, and in place of the apple we set the earth, and thus possess ourselves of the key to the mechanics of the heavens. We now know the connection between hight of fall, velocity, and heat at the surface of the earth. In the place of the earth let us set the sun, with 300,000 times the earth’s mass, and instead of a fall of a few feet, let us take cosmical elevations; we thus obtain a means of generating heat which transcends all terrestrial power.

“It is easy to calculate both the maximum and the minimum velocity imparted by the sun’s attraction to asteroids circulating round him; the maximum is generated when the body approaches the sun from an infinite distance as the entire pull of the sun being then expended upon it; the minimum is that velocity which would barely enable the body to revolve round the sun close to his surface. The final velocity of the former, just before striking the sun, would be 390 miles a second, that of the latter 276 miles a second. The asteroid on striking the sun with the former velocity, would develop more than 3,000 times the heat generated by the combustion of an equal asteroid of solid coal; while the shock, in the latter case, would generate heat equal to that of the combustion of upward of 4,000 such asteroids. It matters not whether the substances falling into the sun be combustible or not; their being combustible would not add sensibly to the tremendous heat produced by their mechanical collision.

“Here then we have an agency competent to restore his lost energy, and to maintain a temperature at his surface which transcends all terrestrial combustion. The very quality of the solar rays—their incomparable penetrating power—enables us to infer that the temperature of their origin must be enormous; but in the fall of asteroids we find the means of producing such a temperature. It may be contended that this showering down of matter must be accompanied by the growth of the sun in size; it is so; but the quantity necessary to produce the observed calorific emission, even if accumulated for 4,000 years, would defy the scrutiny of our best instruments. If the earth struck the sun it would utterly vanish from perception, but the heat developed by the shock would cover the expenditure of the sun for a century.

“To the earth itself apply considerations similar to those which we have applied to the sun. Newton’s theory of gravitation, which enables us, from the present form of the earth, to deduce its original state of aggregation, reveals to us, at the same time, a source of heat powerful enough to bring about the fluid state—powerful enough to fuse even worlds. It teaches us to regard the molten condition of a planet as resulting from mechanical union of cosmical masses, and thus reduces to the same homogeneous process the heat stored up in the body of the earth, and the heat emitted by the sun. Without doubt the whole surface of the sun displays an unbroken ocean of fiery fluid matter. On this ocean rests an atmosphere of flowing gas—a flame atmosphere, or photosphere. But gaseous substances, when compared with solid ones, emit, even when their temperature is very high, only a feeble and transparent light. Hence it is probable that the dazzling white light of the sun comes through the atmosphere from the more solid portions of the surface.… In conclusion, thus writes Professor Thomson: ‘The source of energy from which the solar heat is derived is undoubtedly meteoric.… The principal source—perhaps the sole appreciable efficient source—is in the bodies circulating round the sun at present inside the earth’s orbit seen in the sunlight by us called “Zodiacal light.” The store of energy for future sunlight is at present partly dynamical—that of the motions of these bodies round the sun; and partly potential—that of their gravitation towards the sun. This latter is gradually being spent, half against the resisting medium, and half in causing a continuous increase of the former. Each meteor thus goes on moving faster and faster, and getting nearer and nearer the center, until some time, very suddenly, it gets so much entangled in the solar atmosphere as to begin to lose its velocity. In a few seconds more it is at rest on the sun’s surface, and the energy given up is vibrated across the district where it was gathered during so many ages, ultimately to penetrate as light the remotest regions of space.…

“ ‘The heat of rotation of the sun and planets, taken all together, would cover the solar emission for 134 years; while the heat of gravitation (that produced by falling into the sun) would cover the emission for 45,589 years. There is nothing hypothetical in these results; they follow directly and necessarily from the application of the mechanical equivalent of heat to cosmical masses.’…

“But, continues Helmholtz, though the store of our planetary system is so immense as not to be sensibly diminished by the incessant emission which has gone on during the period of man’s history, and though the time which must elapse before a sensible change in the condition of our planetary system can occur is totally incapable of measurement, the inexorable laws of mechanics show that this store, which can only suffer loss, and not gain, must finally be exhausted. Shall we terrify ourselves by this thought? Men are in the habit of measuring the greatness of the universe, and the wisdom displayed in it, by the duration and the profit which it promises to their own race; but the past history of the earth shows the insignificance of the interval during which man has had his dwelling here. What the museums of Europe show us of the remains of Egypt and Assyria we gaze upon in silent wonder, and despair of being able to carry back our thoughts to a period so remote. Still, the human race must have existed and multiplied for ages before the Pyramids could have been erected. We estimate the duration of human history at 6,000 years; but vast as this time may appear to us, what is it in comparison with the period during which the earth bore successive series of rank plants and mighty animals, but no man? Periods during which, in our own neighborhood (Kœnigsberg) the amber tree bloomed and dropped its costly gum on the earth and in the sea; when in Europe and North America groves of tropical palms flourished, in which gigantic lizards, and after them elephants, whose mighty remains are still buried in the earth, found a home. Different geologists, proceeding from different premises, have sought to estimate the length of the above period, and they set it down from one to nine million of years. The time during which the earth has generated organic beings is again small, compared with the ages during which the world was a mass of molten rocks. The experiments of Bischoff upon basalt show that for our globe to cool down from 2,000° to 200° centigrade would require 350 millions of years. And with regard to the period during which the first nebulous masses condensed, so as to form our planetary system, conjecture must entirely cease. The history of man, therefore, is but a minute ripple in the infinite ocean of time. For a much longer period than that during which he has already occupied the world, the existence of a state of inorganic nature, favorable to man’s existence, seems to be secured; so that for ourselves, and for long generations after us, we have nothing to fear. But the same forces of air and water, and of the volcanic interior, which produced former geological revolutions, and buried one series of living forms after another, still act upon the earth’s crust. They, rather than those distant cosmical changes of which we have spoken, will end the human race, and perhaps compel us to make way for new and more complete forms of life, as the lizard and the mammoth have given way to us and our contemporaries.

“Grand, however, and marvelous as are these questions regarding the physical constitution of the sun, they are but a portion of the wonders connected with our luminary. His relationship to life is yet to be referred to. The earth’s atmosphere contains carbonic acid, and the earth’s surface bears living plants; the former is the nutriment of the latter. The plant seizes the combined carbon and oxygen and tears them asunder, storing the carbon and letting the oxygen go free. By no special force, different in quality from other forces, do plants exercise this power—the real magician here is the sun. We have seen how heat is consumed in forcing asunder the atoms and molecules of solids and liquids, converting itself into potential energy, which reappears as heat when the attractions of the separated atoms are again allowed to come into play. Precisely the same considerations which we then applied to heat we have now to apply to light; for it is at the expense of the solar light that the decomposition of the carbonic acid is effected. Without the sun the reduction cannot take place, and an amount of sunlight is consumed exactly equivalent to the molecular work accomplished. Thus trees are formed, thus meadows grow, thus the flowers bloom. Let the rays fall upon the surface of sand, the sand is heated, and finally radiates away as much as it receives; let the same rays fall upon a forest, the quantity of heat given back is less than that received, for the energy of a portion of the sunbeams is invested in building up the trees. I have here a bundle of cotton which I ignite; it bursts into flame, and yields a definite amount of heat; precisely that amount of heat was abstracted from the sun in order to form that bit of cotton. This is a representative case—every tree, plant, and flower, grows and flourishes by the grace and bounty of the sun.

“But we cannot stop at vegetable life; for this is the source, mediate or immediate, of all animal life. In the animal body vegetable substances are brought again into contact with their beloved oxygen, and they burn within as a fire burns in a grate. This is the source of all animal power; and the forces in play are the same, in kind, as those which operate in inorganic nature. In the plant the clock is wound up, in the animal it runs down. In the plant the atoms are separated, in the animal they recombine. And as surely as the force which moves a clock’s hands is derived from the arm which winds the clock, so surely is all terrestrial power drawn from the sun. Leaving out of account the eruption of volcanoes and the ebb and flow of the tides, every mechanical action on the earth’s surface, every manifestation of power, organic and inorganic, vital or physical, is produced by the sun. His warmth keeps the sea liquid, and the atmosphere a gas, and all the storms which agitate both are blown by the mechanical force of the sun. He lifts the rivers and glaciers up the mountains; and thus the cataract and avalanche shoot with an energy derived immediately from him. Thunder and lightning are also his transmuted strength. Every fire that burns and every flame that glows dispenses light and heat which originally belonged to the sun. In these days, unhappily, the news of battle is familiar to us, but every shock, and every charge, is an application or misapplication of the mechanical force of the sun. He blows the trumpet, he urges the projectile, he bursts the bomb. And remember this is not poetry, but rigid mechanical truth. He rears, as I have said, the whole vegetable world, and through it the animal; the lilies of the field are his workmanship, the verdure of the meadows, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. He forms the muscle, he urges the blood, he builds the brain. His fleetness is in the lion’s foot; he springs in the panther, he soars in the eagle, he slides in the snake. He builds the forest, and hews it down, the power which raised the tree and that which wields the axe being one and the same. The clover sprouts and blossoms, and the scythe of the mower swings, by the operation of the same force. The sun digs the ore from our mines, he rolls the iron, he rivets the plates, he boils the water, he draws the train. He not only grows the cotton, but he spins the fiber and weaves the web. There is not a hammer raised, a wheel turned, or a shuttle thrown, that is not raised, and turned, and thrown by the sun. His energy is poured freely into space, but our world is a halting-place where the energy is conditioned. Here the Proteus works his spells; the self-same essence takes a million of shapes and hues, and finally dissolves into its primitive and almost formless form. The sun comes to us as heat; he quits us as heat; and between his entrance and departure the multiform powers of our globe appear. They are all special forms of solar power—the molds into which his strength is temporarily poured, in passing from its source through infinitude.

“Presented rightly to the mind, the discoveries and generalizations of modern science constitute a poem more sublime than has yet been addressed to the intellect and imagination of man. The natural philosopher of to-day may dwell amid conceptions which beggar those of Milton. So great and grand are they, that in the contemplation of them a certain force of character is requisite to preserve us from bewilderment. Look at the integrated energies of the world—the stored power of our coal fields; our winds and rivers; our fleets, armies, and guns; what are they? They are all generated by a portion of the sun’s energy, which does not amount to 1⁄2300000000​th of the whole. This, in fact, is the entire fraction of the sun’s force intercepted by the earth, and, in reality, we convert but a small fraction of that fraction into mechanical energy. Multiplying all our powers by millions of millions, we do not reach the sun’s expenditure. And still, notwithstanding this enormous drain, in the lapse of human history we are unable to detect a diminution of his store; measured by our largest terrestrial standards, such a reservoir of power is infinite; but it is our privilege to rise above these standards and to regard the sun himself as a speck in infinite extension—a mere drop in the universal sea. We analyze the space in which he is immersed, and which is the vehicle of his power. We pass to other systems and other suns, each pouring forth energy like our own, but still without infringement of the law, which reveals immutability in the midst of change, which recognizes incessant transference and conversion, but neither final gain nor loss. This law generalizes the aphorism of Solomon that there is nothing new under the sun, by teaching us to detect everywhere, under its infinite variety of appearances, the same primeval force. To nature nothing can be added; from nature nothing can be taken away; the sum of her energies is constant, and the utmost that man can do in the pursuit of physical truth, or in the application of physical knowledge, is to shift the constituents of the never-varying total, and out of one of them to form another. The law of conservation rigidly excludes both creation and annihilation. Waves may change into ripples, and ripples into waves—magnitude may be substituted for number, and number for magnitude—asteroids may aggregate to suns, and suns may resolve themselves into flora and fauna, and flora and fauna melt in air—the flux of power is eternally the same. It rolls in music through the ages, and all the terrestrial energy—the manifestations of life, as well as the display of phenomena, are but the modulations of the rhythm” (Tyndall Lecture XII).

CHAPTER V.

GENESIS—THE CREATION.

Man must pass through infancy and childhood before he reaches manhood and maturity. Races and nations also had to pass the stages of infancy and childhood, with all their mistakes, fancy, and fable. In these stages any kind of information and interpretation is readily accepted, without inquiry and without investigation, for the reason that they are not capable of either. To inquire, is the awaking of knowledge; and to investigate, requires understanding. Whatever knowledge has been acquired, that knowledge can be imparted, but no more. If it be true, it cannot be denied or contradicted; if that knowledge be not true, it will be subject to denial, controversy, and dispute, when experience has ripened the understanding. Childhood will listen to anything without contradiction. It accepts the matter as told and believes it. As years pass on, the story that once seemed so impressive and pretty, that was listened to so eagerly, loses its charm, for lack of truth. Fairy tales of past ages were abundant. Every locality had them, and was by them adorned in mystery and wonder. They were ordinarily recited with startling impressiveness. With awe places were pointed out of perhaps some strange apparition, or prodigious occurrence. All of such accounts were either deliberate inventions, or concoctions of a prolific imagination. Early writings abound in them. The improbability of a story grows stronger the farther you go back in the history of humanity. Many of these stories were incorporated in poems, in heroic legends, in tales of the mysterious births of kings and queens, descendants of gods. And the vast majority of the writers of antiquity mix fiction and fact, the possible with the impossible. They treat on the conduct of men, their deeds and misdeeds, according to the extravagant customs of the time.

The Book called scripture writings is composed of three elements—fiction, exaggeration, and fact. The fiction consists of all that portion of the writings that relates to God and his miraculous works. The exaggeration consists of impossible doings of men, such as accounts of miracle-healers, resurrectionists, flights to heaven, etc. The facts appertain to the Jewish race actually—that they did exist as a nation, and conducted their affairs in as barbarous a fashion as their neighbors.

For nearly two thousand years Christianity has done its utmost to sustain the fiction portion as being absolutely true, and still it teaches these absurdities to be true, and anyone doubting their accuracy is liable to persecution. For every doubter of the current belief, whether in ancient or modern times, is subject to discipline of the church to which he belongs. Recently in our own city many have been subjected to a mild form of persecution for doubting. They were declared to be heretics, blasphemers, etc. I speak of such men as Dr. Newton, Dr. Briggs, and others. Yet, we must concede that every organization has a right to judge as to the qualifications of any one of its members, especially if he is an office-holder. They may reject or accept any member. But since his membership depends on whether he believes in their mode of interpreting this fiction, he must say that he believes it, and proclaim to others that it is true, though he knows it is not.

Nothing on earth has given rise to so much dispute, angry quarrel, bitter hatred and abuse, as this fiction. It has been the cause of more villainy, brutality, massacres, and bloody wars than all matters that concern humanity put together.