Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/695

Rh and matter. If in imagination we go back to that early time when our little planet was thrown off from its parent sun, we see, in the nebulous stuff from which it has precipitated, the materials of our own bodies. We are conscious of having had part in that wonderful birth, of having been present at the creation of the earth. It is true that we were very absent-minded at the time, but nevertheless our interest in that little ball of glowing vapor sent whirling off into space was even then a very personal one, for it was the aerial ship that carried our own destinies. If, then, the smallest atom that to-day forms a part of the delicate organism which we hold to be the tool of an indwelling spirit, has existed from all time, and is pledged to all eternity, it is difficult for the student of nature to conceive that the intellect which has given worth and dignity to this otherwise inanimate mass of matter should not be equally enduring. He is led to believe in an immortality of spirit which has known no beginning and will know no end. He is brought to what may be called the doctrine of the conservation of soul.

It has been a dream of poets and philosophers that there is in all the universe but one true element, and that the so-called elements—what we know as gold and silver, copper and iron, hydrogen and oxygen—are but modifications of this one primordial unit. The chemists of the nineteenth century are turning poets and dreaming this dream over again. What would have been scorned but a few years ago as alchemists' madness is now orthodox science. It is hard to believe that such a heavy, infusible metal as platinum has anything in common with a light, combustible gas like hydrogen; but, when we come to think about it, it is still harder to believe that the two are unrelated. When it is found that such dissimilar substances as charcoal, graphite, and diamond are chemically identical, it is quite possible to believe that all the elements are the products of a chemical evolution that has perhaps started with the element "helium," which the spectroscope discloses in the atmosphere of the sun. Thus the belief in the essential unity of the universe grows apace, and the cosmic drama gains in wonder as it gains in simplicity. What Goethe has called "the open secret of the universe" stares every man in the face. As one follows the wonderful story of its mode of becoming, and traces the far-reaching harmonies and relations, he is moved to exclaim with the devout Kepler, "O God, I think over again thy thoughts after thee!"

These considerations by the way, have for their sole purpose the indication of what I feel to be the rational mode of approach to the study of chemistry. It is a science so competent to become a means of keen intellectual pleasure and a stimulus to the most profound thinking, that its neglect by all but special students