Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/226

 proportion to that employed in the original condensation of the gases into the form of coal. Though this is undoubtedly a true statement of a law, it falls short as an explanation of what heat or its origin is, for it offers no explanation of either. To say that heat is a force latent or stored in the coal, if permissible in loose description, will not pass as an explanation of what it is, for since heat is a form of activity, if latent, it would not exist; and to say that it is stored is conspicuously not true, for the storage of activity would be its suspension. The particles of the coal, or of matter in general, though their atomicity is overcome, have no power of themselves to spring into rapid vibration. Their activity is due to that of proximate substances or of atmospheres more interior than the gases of which coal and grosser matter in general are composed. The activity of the more interior atmospheres, which is constant, is communicated to grosser matter when the requisite conditions are furnished. The atoms of matter, being freed, respond to the pressure of forces belonging to superior substances, which in turn derive their activity from the still higher substances of the sun, and lastly through the spiritual world from the Creator. The substances of the spiritual world are perpetually energized and actuated by the Creator. Heat,