Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/60

Rh doctrine that terrestrial substances exist in the heavenly bodies, while the discovery of particular lines in a celestial spectrum which do not coincide with any line in a terrestrial spectrum does not much weaken the general argument, but rather indicates either that a substance exists in the heavenly body not yet detected by chemists on earth, or that the temperature of the heavenly body is such that some substance, undecomposable by our methods, is there split up into components unknown to us in their separate state.

We are thus led to believe that in widely-separated parts of the visible universe molecules exist of various kinds, the molecules of each kind having their various periods of vibration either identical, or so nearly identical that our spectroscopes cannot distinguish them. We might argue from this that these molecules are alike in all other respects, as, for instance, in mass. But it is sufficient for our present purpose to observe that the same kind of molecule, say that of hydrogen, has the same set of periods of vibration, whether we procure the hydrogen from water, from coal, or from meteoric iron, and that light, having the same set of periods of vibration, comes to us from the sun, from Sirius, and from Arcturus.

The same kind of reasoning which led us to believe that hydrogen exists in the sun and stars, also leads us to believe that the molecules of hydrogen in all these bodies had a common origin. For a material system capable of vibration may have for its periods of vibration any set of values whatever. The probability, therefore, that two mate rial systems, quite independent of each other, shall have, to the degree of accuracy of modern spectroscopic measure ments, the same set of periods of vibration, is so very small that we are forced to believe that the two systems are not independent of each other. When, instead of two such systems, we have innumerable multitudes all having the same set of periods, the argument is immensely strengthened.

Admitting, then, that there is a real relation between any two molecules of hydrogen, let us consider what this relation may be.

We may conceive of a mutual action between one body and another tending to assimilate them. Two clocks, for instance, will keep time with each other if connected by a wooden rod, though they have different rates if they were dis connected. But even if the properties of a molecule were as capable of modification as those of a clock, there is no physical connection of a sufficient kind between Sirius and Arcturus.

There are also methods by which a large number of bodies differing from each other may be sorted into sets, so that those in each set more or less resemble each other. In the manufacture of small shot this is done by making the shot roll down an inclined plane. The largest specimens acquire the greatest velocities, and are projected farther than the smaller ones. In this way the various pellets, which differ both in size and in roundness, are sorted into different kinds, those belonging to each kind being nearly of the same size, and those which are not tolerably spherical being rejected altogether.

If the molecules were originally as various as these leaden pellets, and were afterwards sorted into kinds, we should have to. If the molecules were originally as various as these leaden pellets, and were afterwards sorted into kinds, we should have to account for the disappearance of all the molecules which did not fall under one of the very limited number of kinds known to us ; and to get rid of a number of indestructible bodies, exceeding by far the number of the molecules of all the recognised kinds, would be one of the severest labours ever proposed to a cosmogonist.

It is well known that living beings may be grouped into a certain number of species, defined with more or less precision, and that it is difficult or impossible to find a series of individuals forming the links of a continuous chain between one species and another. In the case of living beings, however, the generation of individuals is always going on, each individual differing more or less from its parents. Each individual during its whole life is under going modification, and it either survives and propagates its species, or dies early, accordingly as it is more or less adapted to the circumstances of its environment. Hence, it has been found possible to frame a theory of the distribution of organisms into species by means of generation, variation, and discriminative destruction. But a theory of evolution of this kind cannot be applied to the case of molecules, for the individual molecules neither are born nor die, they have neither parents nor offspring, and so far from being modified by their environment, we find that two molecules of the same kind, say of hydrogen, have the same properties, though one has been compounded with carbon and buried in the earth as coal for untold ages, while the other has been " occluded" in the iron of a meteorite, and after unknown wanderings in the heavens has at last fallen into the hands of some terrestrial chemist.

The process by which the molecules become distributed into distinct species is not one of which we know any instances going on at present, or of which we have as yet been able to form any mental representation. If we suppose that the molecules known to us are built up each of some moderate number of atoms, these atoms being all of them exactly alike, then we may attribute the limited number of molecular species to the limited number of ways in which the primitive atoms may be combined so as to form a permanent system.

But though this hypothesis gets rid of the difficulty of accounting for the independent origin of different species of molecules, it merely transfers the difficulty from the known molecules to the primitive atoms. How did the atoms come to be all alike in those properties which are in themselves capable of assuming any value ? If we adopt the theory of Boscovich, and assert that the primitive atom is a mere centre of force, having a certain definite mass, we may get over the difficulty about the equality of the mass of all atoms by laying it down as a doctrine which cannot be disproved by experiment, that mass is not a quantity capable of continuous increase or diminution, but that it is in its own nature discontinuous, like number, the atom being the unit, and all masses being multiples of that unit. We have no evidence that it is possible for the ratio of two masses to be an incommensurable quantity, for the incommensurable quantities in geometry are supposed to be traced out in a continuous medium. If matter is atomic, and therefore discontinuous, it is unfitted for the construction of perfect geometrical models, but in other respects it may fulfil its functions.

But even if we adopt a theory which makes the equality of the mass of different atoms a result depending on the nature of mass rather than on any quantitative adjustment, the correspondence of the periods of vibration of actual molecules is a fact of a different order.

We know that radiations exist having periods of vibration of every value between those corresponding to the limits of the visible spectrum, and probably far beyond these limits on both sides. The most powerful spectroscope can detect no gap or discontinuity in the spectrum of the light emitted by incandescent lime.

The period of vibration of a luminous particle is therefore a quantity which in itself is capable of assuming any one of a series of values, which, if not mathematically continuous, is such that consecutive observed values differ from each other by less than the ten thousandth part of either. There is, therefore, nothing in the nature of time itself to prevent the period of vibration of a molecule from assuming any one of many thousand different observable