|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 39
Matter is worthy of God's creation. Astronomy is awe-full; microscopy
is no less so. Astronomy means immensity, bulk; atoms mean
individuality. The essence of matter seems to be spirit, personality.
It seems to be able to count, or at least to be cognizant of certain
exact quantities. An atom of bromine will combine with one of
hydrogen; one of oxygen with two of hydrogen; one of nitrogen with
three of hydrogen; one of silicon with four of hydrogen, etc. They
marry without thought of divorce. A group of atoms married by affinity
is called a molecule. Two atoms of hydrogen joined to one of oxygen
make water. They are like three marbles laid near together on the
ground, not close together; for we well know that water does not fill
all the space it occupies. We can put eight or ten similar bulks of
other substances into a glass of water without greatly increasing its
bulk, some actually diminishing it. Water molecules are like a mass of
shot, with large interstices between. Drive the atoms of water apart
by heat till the water becomes steam, till they are as three marbles a
larger distance apart, yet the molecule is not destroyed, the union is
still indissoluble. One physicist has declared that the atoms of
oxygen and hydrogen are probably not nearer to each other in water than
one hundred and fifty men would be if scattered over the surface of
England--one man for each four hundred square miles.[2] What must the
distance be in steam? what the greater distance in the more extreme
rarefactions? It is asserted that millions of cubic miles of some
comets tails would not make a cubic inch of matter solid as iron. Now,
when earth and oceans are "changed" to this sort of tenuity creations
will be more easy. We shall not be obliged to hew out our material
with broadaxes, nor blast it out with dynamite. Let us not fear that
these creations will not be permanent; they will be enough so for our
purpose. We can then afford to waste more worlds in a day than dull
stupidity can count in a lifetime.
We are getting used to this sort of work already. When we reduce
common air in a bulb to one one-thousandth of its normal density at the
sea we get the possibility of continuous incandescent electric light by
the vibration of platinum wire. When we reduce it to a tenuity of one
millionth of the normal density we get the possibility of the X rays by
vibrations of itself without any platinum wire. The greater the
tenuity the greater the creative results. For example, water in
freezing exerts an expansive, thrusting force of thirty thousand pounds
to the square inch, over two thousand tons to the square foot; an
incomprehensible force, but applicable in nature to little besides
splitting rocks. On the other hand, when water is rarefied into steam
its power is vastly more versatile, tractable, and serviceable in a
thousand ways. Take a bit of metal called zinc. It is heavy, subject
to gravitation, solid, subject to cohesion. But cause it to be burned,
to pass away, and be changed. To do this we use fire, not the ordinary
kind, but liquid that we keep in a bottle and call acid. The zinc is
burned up. What becomes of it? It becomes electricity. How changed!
It is no longer solid, but is a live fire that rings bells in our
houses, picks up our thought and pours it into the ear of a friend
miles away by the telephone, or thousands of miles away by the
telegraph. Burning up is only the means of a new and higher life. Ah,
delicate Ariel, tricksy sprite, the only way to get you is to burn up
the solid body.
The possibility of rare creation depends on rare material, on
spirit-like tenuity. And that is what the world goes into. There is a
substance called nitrite of amyl, known to many as a medicine for heart
disease. It is applied by inhaling its odor--a style of very much
rarefied application. Fill a tube with its vapor. It is invisible as
ordinary air in daylight. But pour a beam of direct sunlight from end
to end along its major axis. A dense cloud forms along the path of the
sunbeam; creation is going on. What the sun may do in the thinner
vapors the world goes into when burned up will be for us to find out
when we get there. Standing on Popocatepetl we have seen a sea of
clouds below, white as the light of transfiguration, tossed into waves
a mile high by the touch of the sunbeam. Creative ordering was
observed in actual process. It is done under our eyes to show us how
easy it is. Would it be any less glorious if there were no
Popocatepetl? A thrush among vines outside is just now showing us how
easy it is to create an ecstasy of music out of silence. She has only
to open her mouth and the innate aptitudes of air rush in to actualize
her creative wish. Not only is it easy for the bird, but she is even
provoked to this love and good works by the creation of a rainbow on
the retreating blackness of a storm yonder. Thunder is the sub-bass
nature furnishes her, and thus invites her to add the complementary
notes.
Some one may think that all this tenuity is as vaporous as the stuff
that dreams are made of, and call for solid rocks for foundations.
Perhaps we may so call while we have material bodies of two hundred
pounds' weight. Yet even these bodies are delicate enough to be
valuable to us solely because they have the utmost chemical stability.
We are burning up their substance with every breath in order to have
delicacy of feeling and thought. What were a wooden body worth?
Substances are valuable to us according to their fineness and facility
of change. Even iron is mobile in all its particles. We call it
solid, but it is not. We lift our eyes from this writing and behold
the tumbling surf of the great Pacific sea. Line after line of its
billows are charging on the shore and tumbling in utmost confusion and
roar of advancing and refluent waves. So the iron of the telephone
wire. You often hold the receiver to your ear listening, not to the
voice of business or friendship of men, but to the gentle hum of the
rolling surf in the wire's own substance. And, in order that we may
know the essential stability of things that are fine, we are told that
the city which hath enduring foundations is in the spirit world, not
this kind of material. The whole new Jerusalem to come down "out of
heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband," is as movable as
a train of cars is movable here. There may still be rainbows and
rivers of life if there are no more rocks. There is a real realm of
"scientific imagination." But all our imaginings fall far short of
realities. Some men do not desire this realm, and demand solid rocks
to walk on. But a bird does not. He oars himself along the upper
fields and rides on air. So does a bicyclist and balloonist. Some men
have a sort of contempt for aeronauts and workers at flying machines.
That feeling is a testimony to their depravity and groveling
tendencies. Aeronautics and nautics are an effort toward angelhood.
Men can walk water who are willing to take a boat for an overshoe. So
we may air when we get the right shoe. Browning gives us a delicious
sense of being amphibian as we swim. And the butterfly, that winged
rather than rooted flower, looking down upon us as we float, begets in
us a great longing to be polyphibian. We have innate tendencies toward
a life of finer surroundings, and we shall take to them with zest, if
we are not too much of the earth earthy. We were designed for this
finer life. We do take to it even now in the days of our
deterioration, not to say depravity. The great marvels of the world
are not so much in matter as in man. We were meant to be more
sensitive to finer influences than we are. We are far more so than we
think. Take your child into the street. Another child coughs at a
window on the other side, and your child has three months of terrific
whooping-cough. All such diseases are taken by homeopathic doses of
the millionth dilution. Many people feel "in their bones" the coming
of storms days before their arrival. We knew a man who ate honey with
delight till he was twenty-five years old, and then could do so no
more. This peculiarity he inherited from his father. One man has an
insatiable desire for drink because some ancestor of his, back in the
third or fourth generation, bequeathed him that curse. In the South
you can go a mile in the face of the wind and find that peerless
blossom of a magnolia by following the drift of its far-reaching odor.
Who has not received a letter and knew before opening it that it had
violets within? It had atmosphered itself with rich perfume, and
something far richer, for three thousand miles. The first influences
which came over the Atlantic cable were so feeble that a sleeping
infant's breath were a whirlwind in comparison. But they were read.
It is no wonder that the old astrologers thought that men's whole lives
were influenced by the stars. Every vegetable life, from the meanest
flower that blows to the largest tree, has its whole existence shaped
by the sun. Doubtless man's body was meant to be an Aeolian (how the
vowels and liquids flow into the very name!) harp of a thousand strings
over which a thousand delicate influences might breathe. Soul was
meant to be sensitive to the influences of the Spirit. This capability
has been somewhat lost in our deterioration. To recover these finer
faculties men are required to die. And for the field of exercising
them the world must be changed. Paul understood this. He associated
some sort of perfection with the resurrection, with the buying back of
the powers of the body. And the whole creation waiteth for the
apocalypse of the full-sized sons of God.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|