Page:The evolution of worlds - Lowell.djvu/191

Rh Heat is most intimately associated with the very constitution of matter. It is, in fact, merely the motion of its ultimate particles, and plays an essential part in their chemical relations. Just as a certain discreet fervor and sufficient exposure for attraction to take, make for matrimony, so with the little molecules, a suitable degree of warmth and a propitious opportunity similarly conduce to conjunction; too fiery a temperament resulting in a vagabondage preventative of settled partnership and too cold a one in permanent celibacy. You may think the simile a touch too anthropomorphic, but it is a most sober statement of fact. Indeed, it is more than probable that in some dull sense they feel the impulse, though not the need of expressing it in verse. That metals can remember their past states seems to have been demonstrated by Bose, and is certainly in keeping with general principles as we know them to-day. For memory is the partial retention of past changes, rendering those changes more facile of repetition.

A high degree of heat, then, makes chemical union impossible, because the great speeds at which the molecules are rushing past each other prevents any of them being caught. Lack of speed is equally deterrent. Nor is it wholly or even principally, perhaps, a movement of the whole which is here concerned, but a partitive throbbing of the molecule itself. Certain it is that