j UNITY IN NATURE UNITY IN NATURE AN ANALOGY BETWEEN MUSIC AND LIFE BY C. E. STROMEYER Past Member of the General Board of the National Physical Laboratory Member of Council of the Institute of Naval Architects M.Inst.C.E., Mem. Inst.N.A., M.I.Mech.E., Mem. I. & S. Inst., etc. Author of " Marine Boiler Management and Construction " LONDON SHERRATT & HUGHES Manchester : 34 Cross Street 1911 DeMcatefc to tbe /IBemors of ffriefcricb /l&obr 740470 PREFACE. Being an Engineer by choice and profession, it seemed but natural that the analogy with which these pages deal should, from the very first, have exerted a powerful fascination over me; for Engineers lean almost entirely on analogy for their inspirations and progresses. In this respect our professions differ from the less prac- tical but more logical ones, whose members are satisfied with the finality which is associated with what they accept as proofs. These, although they determine Judges, juries and the public, even in matters of Life and Death, or Peace and War, are only too often based on false or insufficient evidence and on sophistical argu- ments. On the other hand, Engineers and in fact all Scientists abhor every suggestion of finality, for that is a stumbling block to improvement and progress. They feel that, from first to last, each experiment is but the analogue of the next one, that the inventor's sketch is but the analogue of the finished machine and that there is no end to possible researches and improvements. To this tendency of Engineers, to lean on analogy, might be attributed the slowness of mechanical progress, but it is far more correct to say that practical advances have generally been hampered for want, at the time, of suit- able materials. Seeing that these never affect the first flights even of inventive ideas, I need hardly have felt surprised at the ease and rapidity with which the present analogy led me along untrodden paths to points of view which do not seem to have revealed themselves to Logicians, writers who have to limit their thoughts and viii. PREFACE. ideas to the words with which their languages have provided them. Looking back from one of these points of view, the fact stood out with glaring distinctness, that the existing philosophical systems have been evolved during tens of centuries, in which the great principle of the Indestructibility of Matter had not been established and that of the Conservation of Energy had not even been suggested; two principles on which every modern science is now securely resting. Through floating mists glimpses could also be caught of painstaking thinkers of the past, who vaguely conscious of the overshadowing presence of these great truths, to which they could not lift their eyes, gave expression to their feelings by dividing this world, sometimes into superior and inferior realms, sometimes into material and immaterial parts and sometimes into good and bad camps. Turning towards the future the view is less clear, for no one can tell whether the fuller exploitation of the scientific dis- coveries of the last century will satisfy our craving for knowledge as to what we are, a craving which seems to be the child of a longing for confirmation of an inner feeling that, we are one with Nature, in other words, that there is a real "UNITY IN NATURE." C. E.S. WEST DIDSBURY, October, 1911. CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction . 1 Flatland - 12 Nature of Music - 19 Laws: Natural and Artificial 34 The Essence of Music and of Life - 62 Matter 69 Energy: . 93 Heat 98 Electrical . . . - 100 Chemical - 102 Organic or Cell - - 111 Geological Records - - - - 121 Palseontological Tables - ... 154 Evolution - -.-.__. igo Nerve Energy 171 Ideas and Idols - 189 The Fourth Dimension .... 208 The Creator and His Work - - - - - 218 Perfect Musjc 225 Perfect Life and Human Happiness .... 229 Ethics --.,.. 247 Urbanism and Ruralism 271 Sexual Ethics 294 States . . -332 Education or State Thinking .... 345 Political Economy - 396 State Harmony -----___ 422 x CONTENTS. PAGE Reserve Power of State 472 State Incongruities and Discords: Legislation Representation 506 Constitutions 521 Justice 526 Administration 534 Taxation 536 Property 547 Marriages - 54; The Drink Question 560 Education - 564 The Press 571 War - 573 Contraband of War 584 Communism - - - 587 INTRODUCTION. IN Dreamland the process of finding a suitable beginning to a sudden event is a very simple matter. A noise or an external or internal disturbance creates a shock which is magnified into a catastrophe, perhaps into a fall from a cliff, then on awakening or perhaps even while sleeping, the intellect manufactures a whole string of more or less plausible preceding events. It is different in literature. A leading idea grows out of past events and thoughts, and while it is being developed and expanded into other and newer ideas, its origins are at times lost sight of, and if, on rediscovery, they should be placed in the van of the matured subject, a prominence is given to them which they do not deserve. The present subject has been no exception to this rule with the result that after completion, the temptation was experienced not only of discarding the ladder by which certain points of view had been reached, but even of recasting the whole framework and of discuss- ing philosophical subjects on philosophical lines. But then again it was felt that to marshal arguments for and against particular ideas, demanded painstaking and lengthy re- views of all that has been preserved of other peoples' thoughts, a process which, if extended to all the subjects touched upon in these pages, would become interminable and confusing, nor would this be a satisfactory process unless it led to some definite pronouncement in the finish, an impossibility with a subject which is connected with so much that may for ever remain unknowable. In fact when the simple question is asked : " What is it that one really knows?" the answer is essentially that one knows nothing. It may be said that there is a definite feeling as to the nature of space, time, matter and energy, and l B 2 UNITY IN NATURE their subdivisions and interactions are called sciences, but ev^n they do not help to a real knowledge of what things actually are, they -do not define each other. Hours are not expressed in terms of yards, nor gallons in terms of pounds. In discussing an unknowable subject like life, it seemed that the best that could at present be done would be to try and impart a correct feeling about its nature so as to place it on the same level as time, space, matter and energy. This would have to be not a philosophical but an artistic process, one which is being constantly carried out in all works of art. Music deals with time, and sculpture and painting with space. It is true that all works of art are intended to represent life, but each statue, each picture, each play or book deals with only one form of life, whereas here the desire has been to bring within the compass of human contemplation the all-embracing life of the universe. Such a complex cannot, of course, be repre- sented on a single canvas and a multitude of pictures would only obscure the view, nor can it be expressed by a single philosophical pronouncement. A semi-artistic and semi-philosophical process, one which led to the views contained in these pages, has therefore been adopted of using Music as an allegory of Life. Schopenhauer's idea, that Music is quite as independent a world as the physical one, has been exploited to its fullest extent, and step by step the reader will be asked to transplant himself alter- nately into the world of Music and into the physical world, in the hope that he will thereby gain a better feeling as to the real nature of both. Allegory seems to be the best means for obtaining, if not a better insight into, at any rate a more sympathetic feeling with a set of very complicated subjects. It has certainly in the course of this work helped to reach many new points of view, and it has only the disadvantage of not being as exact as mathematical reasonings are sup- posed to be, nor as attractive as artistic works of fiction. INTRODUCTION 3 On the other hand it must not be forgotten that fables, parables and allegories are the implements which are used not only for the education of children but also of nations. Before outlining the path which will here be followed it seems desirable to make a few remarks about the un- knowable and about the difference in the methods employed by art and philosophy, and their working. To answer the question " What is it that we know ? " is about as difficult as to explain "What is truth ?" Kant and Schopenhauer deny even existence, to them all is imagina- tion, and space and time are no realities but mere func- tions. Yet each living creature is conscious that it exists, appreciates the space in which it moves and the change of time. Whether even human beings really know what these things are, does not matter, knowledge may be imperfect as compared with superknowledge of metaphysi- cians, but the word knowledge has been adopted by man- kind for expressing a certain capability and there is no need to change its meaning. To know what space is, means not only to have a vague notion about its existence but it also means that it can be dealt with, that it can be subdivided, measured and correlated. This is the science of geometry. Geometry does not profess to say whether space is a reality or merely a function, nor does it explain space in terms of time. It merely discusses the inter-relation of sub- divisions of space. What Locke, Kant and Schopenhauer meant by their use of the word knowledge is a sort of superknowledge, which would be as difficult to define as the objects about which superknowledge is being sought. Time also is well understood by reasoning beings. Its subdivision and correlation is the science of numbers. Algebra is applied to both sciences and is merely an instrument for recording and conveying thoughts about time and space, just as speech, writing and drawing are instruments for conveying ideas. But Algebra does not unite time and space, nor does it enable the one set of dimensions to be expressed in terms of the other. Energy 4 UNITY IN NATUKE can be converted into heat or into electricity because the three are one and the same thing, but time cannot be converted into space nor measured in space units. A square yard of hours and a week of cubic inches are equally absurd expressions. The combination of space and time gives rise to the ideas of velocity, acceleration, etc., which are perfectly understandable, but it does not help to explain either time or space. Although, therefore, one knows, in the ordinary sense of the word, what time is, and what space is, one has not the superknowledge which might permit of time being explained in terms of space and vice versa. The ancient Greeks knew this and expressed themselves by saying that only like can measure like, space measures space, weight measures weight, force measures force, etc. Matter is another something which is unknowable, though chapters in physics and the entire science of chemistry are occupied with this subject. Matter exists in space, movements of material objects, chemical changes are carried out during definite periods of time and a full knowledge of matter demands a knowledge of the correlation of time and space with matter, but matter cannot be converted into time, nor into space, nor can it be expressed in their terms. Such expressions as a cubic yard of pounds, or a hundred- weight of hours are quite meaningless. A cubic foot of water is a different term altogether, it cuts off a certain quantity of matter about which one has the knowledge that it weighs so many pounds and that it has various properties and qualities. Very similar remarks apply to energy, the fourth con- stituent of the Universe ; like time, space and matter it is indestructible. The physical sciences impart a very full knowledge as to what it is, but it cannot be expressed in terms either of time, space or matter; here too therefore the superknowledge hoped for by some metaphysicians is an impossibility, and all that can be done by philosophy is to study changes, subdivisions and correlations, while INTRODUCTION 5 art lias to content itself with portraying these subdivisions in such a way as to impart a more or less correct feeling about them. Art and Philosophy are two luxuries which human beings indulge in, apparently with a semi-conscious feeling that they bring them nearer to the secrets of the Universe, or that they may be capable of revealing the truth about a something which can be seen, heard, felt, tasted, smelt, about a something which is called Nature. A name has been given to this something, yes many names, but humanity has no superknowledge as to what it is. Partly perhaps because of this deficiency in our know- ledge, partly perhaps because human beings are a part of this something, and because the highest striving of this something is towards self-consciousness, they have a constant longing to know what it is and they are also constantly attracted by its manifestations. Art in a way satisfies this craving by portraying nature, by presenting its essence. That unquestionably is the reason why art does not improve by being brought into contact with nature ; a picture gains by being hung on a bare wall but loses if surrounded by living foliage. In our towns nature's green trees and the soft meadows have been replaced by walls and pavements, so that even a prop or a buttress pleases us because it conveys the idea of a force of nature which is quite absent from a flat surface. Even a hole in a wall would be welcome because it too gives an idea of thickness and of strength. Philosophy on the other hand aims at discovering what nature is. Art appeals to the feelings and therefore expressions about works of art are of a feeling nature, such as graceful, beautiful, grand and horrible. Philosophy appeals to the intellect and one admires those of its votaries whose brains have discovered gravity, heat, elec- tricity and other forces of nature, for they have brought us a few steps nearer to a true understanding of the world. Philosophy professes to proceed step by step and clings 6 UNITY IN NATURE to wliat it calls facts, like a mountaineer to his rocks, whereas Art flies from peak to peak, ignores the rocks of which they are built up and makes one feel how vast and grand, how beautiful and deep is the world. Thus Philo- sophy is able to explain why stones of certain shapes can be placed together in such a way as to support each other and form an arch, their strength and weight can be estimated, so can the force of gravity and the lines of thrust, but even to-day the philosopher cannot say what gravity is, nor force, nor weight, nor strength. The artistic designer of an arch does not attempt to explain these things, he feels their essence and, if he has put this feeling into his design, it becomes a work of art. He does more than this, he makes artists of others by teaching them to feel what he felt, the very essence of the primitive forces. He does this through the feelings which a con- templation of the graceful lines of his work engenders. In one sense architecture is the simplest of arts ; it aims no higher than to awaken sympathy with nature's primi- tive forces. In painting and sculpture art aims at familiarising us with other and more complicated powers. Animal strength, agility and beauty, when represented by a true sculptor, are far more than mere imitations, their essence has made itself felt, though the substance is but stone which possesses neither animal powers nor agility. Pain, fear, ferocity, hate and the more tender passions are less easily infused into cold marble, colour is wanted ; " Soft eyes spake love to eyes that spake again " ... is an impossible subject for bronze. The artist's brush is called in to depict what human eyes have perhaps not seen, but what human beings feel and what the artist must have felt before he could portray it. Again a painting can render only a single feeling, but a change, as from fear to triumph, from joy to sorrow is beyond its reach. This is the domain of the poet, the actor or orator, and it is here that the contrast between the artist and the philosopher, or rather between their INTRODUCTION 7 methods, is most marked. The poet feels the influence of forces of nature, including human passion; he may have experienced the irresistible power of love and may cry out '* I list not, I care not, if guilt's in thy heart, I know that I love thee whatever thou art." He thus conveys the feeling that love may drive men to almost any deed. Philosophers offer little help; they cannot even explain why love is powerful, nor what it is, whereas the poet feels, and makes others feel what it is and makes poets of them. That is the reason why little thought is given to the means he employs, "Hhyme is not reason/' but to many it appeals more strongly than any laboured argu- ments. In searching for the true nature of music, a subject which will here be attempted, one should therefore not listen only to what the philosopher has to say about it but also to the artist's production. Both will find it difficult to give a straightforward reply. The one may attempt an answer to the effect that music is the harmony of vibrations, but that does not give the essence of what music is. One naturally turns to the musical artist. He may say that he cannot tell what music is, but that he will perform his favourite piece. It may excite the audience to the point of dancing, it may lull it to -sleep, it may make some weep or otherwise affect the feelings, and when he has done and proudly says " That is music," a momentary feeling that one knows what it is may creep over one. That is perhaps what Schopenhauer meant (Die Welt als Wille und Yorstellung, vol. i, 52, vol. ii, chapter 39). Schopenhauer's remarks about music are said to have inspired Wagner ; briefly stated, they amount to this, that music is a parallelism of life and not its copy. He likens the bass with its slow and restricted movements to the primitive but powerful forces of nature which guide the stars, produce earthquakes, storms, fire, heat and light. The tenor and alto, according to his view, run parallel with the organic kingdoms of plants and animals, while 8 UNITY IN NATURE the soprano is likened to the actions of human beings. Schopenhauer seems to have been the first to point out this parallelism in words, but every song, every opera is an indication that some sort of a parallelism exists between music and the actions and sentiments of human beings. The word parallelism is expressive in more senses than one ; not only does it imply that there is an active life in the musical spheres, similar to that in this world, but it also conveys the impression that life and music are not copies of each other, that they may run side by side with- out ever actually meeting. The works of all other arts are linked to us by some association of a material kind, and are copies of realities, but music differs from them all, its only point of contact being, that while it consists of frequent changes of vibrations, one of our senses, hearing, is specially adapted for rapidly following these changes and harmonising them. When this connecting link is severed by deafness, as it was with Beethoven, the music which is still felt must, more than ever, seem like an independent world, a sphere into which composers have the entree; it is, therefore, to them that one looks for information as to what that world is. There is a strong feeling that there may be other worlds like music for which none of our senses have become adapted, and innumerable have been the efforts to make tangible what no man has seen or heard. Of these attempts the fairy tales, the legends of spirits and of gods are the best known examples ; they aim at giving shape to feelings about possible worlds which are beyond the reach of human senses. Yisits are paid to the planets, distant stars, to heavenly regions, the Styx and Hades, or inhabitants of these distant or imaginary worlds visit this earth and leave their notebooks behind them, the object in all these narratives being to transfer human beings to some outside standpoint from which we can see ourselves and this world as others might see us. It is not a philosophical process but an artistic one, things are not explained but INTRODUCTION 9 are placed in relief for contemplation. The happenings in one world, allegorically explain those in the other world. This is the path which will be trodden in these pages, positions will several times be changed from the physical world to the musical world, and back again. From the- one standpoint music will be scanned, and from the other this world and its life will be surveyed. The first task which has to be undertaken is to convey the idea that music is an independent world, but so difficult even conversationally has this task been found, that the assistance was called in of a sketch by an author calling himself "A Square," who tried to explain the nature of an independent world called " Flatland," to which subject one chapter in the present work is devoted. Then follows a chapter entitled " Music," in which an attempt is made to impart the feeling that music, as distinct from musical pieces, is without beginnings and without endings, and that in this respect at least it is similar to our world. The next chapter on " Laws," also aims at demonstrating the similarity and the independence of the two worlds by showing that they are both controlled by unalterable laws of nature. These chapters may be looked upon as introductions, and now the process of contemplating each world from outside points of view is indulged in several times, the first question asked being : " What is the ' Essence of Life and of Music ?' ' The answer is that both are essentially dualisms, and then dealing lightly with the musical world six rather substantial chapters follow on the dualism of the physical world, on "Matter and Energy." The next contemplations from the musical and physical points of view lead to the questions as to what is the inter-relation between a composer and his musical pieces and that of a Creator and His Creation. As the answer must necessarily suggest the possibility of the existence of a spiritual world which is as superior as regards dimensions, as ours is to the world of music the above subjects are preceded by a 10 UNITY IN NATURE chapter on the "Fourth. Dimension," in which it is sug- gested that the abode of a Creator is not likely to be in a world which has merely one more dimension than ours. The suggestion is there thrown out that a study of elec- tricity does at least suggest the existence of other worlds. Once more the process of changing standpoints is resorted to, and the questions are asked : " What is 'Perfect Music?'" and "What is happiness or 'Perfect Life?'" Thus by an unfrequented but perfectly straightforward and easily negotiable path, the same point of view is reached from which philosophers of all ages have tried to survey the actions of human beings. The outlook, screened as it always has been by preconceived or nursery notions, is but a limited one, and although there was serious tempta- tion when dealing with "Ethics" to define right and wrong, good and bad, the temptation to sit in judgment has been resisted and attention has been centred mainly on a true understanding of what humanity means by the expressions Immorality and Crime. This method of dealing with ethics necessitated the interpolation of a chapter on "Urbanism," in which town and country life are contrasted. It was hoped that these chapters could have concluded the work, but even these introductory remarks must lead to a feeling that, in searching for what the general public mean by immorality and crime, the question of state immorality and state crime looms darkly ahead, and it seemed as if the subject would be incomplete unless "State Education," "State Harmonies" and "State Incon- gruities" were also discussed. It will of course be under- stood that these chapters, even more so than the previous ones, could not, without becoming meaningless to most people, refrain from touching on modern topics, and quite unintentionally an undesirable flavour of onesidedness will have made its appearance. Several attempts which were made to neutralize this effect had to be given up, for they merely resulted in creating an impression of vague- INTRODUCTION 11 ness and vacillation. There has certainly been no inten- tion to discuss politics, unless of course political influence be interpreted to mean the pointing out of state blemishes in the hope that they may be removed and that conflicting tendencies may be harmonised. Nevertheless it was not for these objects that this work was written. It was, as already stated, prompted by Schopenhauer's suggestion of a parallelism of music and life, and gradually during the progress of this work as this parallelism was being traced more thoroughly than he had done, the conviction grew that indestructible Energy, a comparatively recent discovery, in all its numerous manifestations as Life, deserved far more atten- tion than has yet been accorded to it by metaphysicians, and that possibly a better use than has been customary might now be made of the great advantage possessed by human beings of being able to contemplate all things, and that this might lead to a clearer understanding of what perfect life is or what it should be. FLATLAND. As it is intended to deal with music as if it were an independent world, a world outside of the universe, it is essential to grasp the idea of an outside world, and at first one turns almost naturally to the world of spirits, but theirs is an unknown one, believed to be governed by laws which are a strange and arbitrary mixture of natural and supernatural ones. It therefore seemed desirable to create a new world, which should be possible by imagining some of the great forces of nature, as for instance heat and light, to have been removed. Then the surface of the earth would be absolutely lifeless, no fluids could exist as such, because of the cold and there would be no bright sun nor stars. The only signs of life would be the rotation and revolution of black planets and black and cold suns. Life would be a problem of circles. Such a world would be unsuitable for the present purpose. Let gravity and attraction be removed, then at once all the suns and stars would fall to pieces, would become dust or vapour, life would again be impossible, there would even be no motion in ,the universe; it would be a lifeless dust or gas. These attempts at creating new worlds by removing one of the essentials of this one are evidently failures, but fortunately mathematicians, by mixing up geometry and logic, have been able to conceive the idea of a world with four dimensions ; a world which "A Square," the author of "Flatland," sets himself to demonstrate. He tries to show that another world, or a system of a world could be conceived, in which space, instead of having only the three dimensions : length, breadth and depth or height, has four. This, it is shown, would be a somewhat unstable 12 FLATLAND 13 and unsatisfactory world in which its objects could have no inside and no outside, in which hollow spheres, for instance indiarubber balls, or their equivalents, could be turned inside out without having to be cut, in which oranges might find themselves with their pips sometimes inside, sometimes outside, in which single knots could be tied in endless ropes, in which objects could disappear from one point and appear in another, about which world it is even hinted that it is the world of ghosts and spirits. Whether any sphere, rope or living ghost can possibly exist in a space having four dimensions is a matter about which "A Square " does not trouble himself ; he merely wishes mankind to grasp the possibility of the existence of a world with four dimensions. To do this "A Square " adopts the plan of first of all inventing a much simpler world than this physical one with its three dimensions, a world with only two dimensions : length and breadth. He calls it "Flatland," and then shows how difficult, not to say impossible, it would be for the inhabitants of Flatland to grasp the idea of depth or height, a dimension of which we know that it has an actual existence. From this difficulty he argues that it is equally difficult, not to say impossible, for individuals like ourselves who live in a world of three dimensions to grasp the idea of a fourth one. It is not desirable to follow "A Square" in his amusing and instructive efforts to make one feel the reality of his imaginary world, especially as it is rather mathematical in its details, but an effort will be made to reproduce his world on a more physical basis. Let there be an abso- lutely calm pond of stagnant inky water. Assume it to be covered with a dense black fog and that on this black water a small quantity of the clearest mineral oil is poured. It will at once spread itself out over the surface and thus constitute a transparent sheet, a flatland, in which seeing along the surface would be quite possible. The inhabitants are Flatlanders who must be lighter 14 UNITY IN NATURE than muddy water and heavier than fog. Each Flatlander must be surrounded on his or her circumference by a nervous system with which other objects in transparent Flatland can be observed. If the fog were cleared away, these Flatlanders, viewed from above, would look like leaves or bits of paper, floating on inky water. They are supposed to be capable of propelling themselves and of seeing each other through the thin covering film of oil and of being able to communicate with each other, but they must be supposed to be incapable of moving up or down, or of seeing or hearing what is above them or below. Even if they had been created with nerves extending over their flat sides, as animals have nerves not only on their outsides but also in their insides, the water and the fog would still prevent their utilising them and training them to interpret sensations which might reach them from above or below. Should a bubble rise from below and lift up the centre of a Flatlander so that this part would be in the higher world, in Fogland, then no doubt he would feel sensations which human beings feel when they think them- selves ill. He might call in a Flatland doctor, who, guided by previous experiences, might administer a medicine which, without his knowing the exact action, effects a cure by eating a small hole in the centre of the Flatlander's flat body and thus letting the gas escape upwards, or a natural cure may be effected by the sideways escape of the bubble. In any case the patient would have no conception of the actual cause of his trouble ; he would be incapable of conceiving the spherical shape of a bubble, just as human beings are generally quite unable to locate an internal trouble; they do not know which tooth is aching, they complain of headaches when bowels or eyes are out of order, and even feel pains in the tips of ampu- tated limbs. Let it be assumed that these Flatlanders have attained a high state of civilisation, that they can even philosophise about much that occurs in Flatland. They may have FLATLAND 15 discovered the laws that objects in Flatland can alter their shapes, which we should call circumferences, but that their sizes, which we should call superficial areas, cannot alter. In Flatland a square inch would remain a square inch for ever. It might change to two inches long and half an inch broad or ten inches long and one-tenth inch broad, but its size or area would always be one square inch. This law would be similar to the one which has been established in the physical world, that matter is inde- structible, that its shape can be altered but not its weight. It has also been established that energy may be converted into numerous conditions but that it, too, is indestructible, and its amount never changes. Let it now be supposed that some object, say a piece of wood, is being slowly lowered out of the fog through Flatland into the muddy water below, and suppose that a Flatlander scientist is near at hand to observe this pro- ceeding. He would be seeing what here would be called a ghost. A something real appears where there was nothing before. Imagine his consternation on seeing an object appear where there was none, growing in size and altering its shape. Suppose also that it should accident- ally catch one of the Flatlanders, drag him down and therefore more than kill him by actually carrying his body out of his world, out of Flatland. What would be said? TV hat should we say if one of us vanished? Bystanders would be able to swear to what they had seen, others would probably not believe them, and if a sufficiently powerful caste existed in Flatland to whose well-being it might seem essential that every Flatlander should truly and faithfully believe in the indestructibility of Flatland objects, then no doubt, they would see to it that the un- fortunate observer of an uncanny apparition would be put under lock and key or otherwise made harmless. Such a case is not mentioned by "A Square," but he deals with a similar possibility and allows one of the Flatland philoso- phers to grasp the true explanation, viz., that besides 16 UNITY IN NATURE length and breadth, which are the only dimensions in Flatland, there may be a third dimension, which here is called either height or depth. He then lets his Flatland philosopher try to explain this view to his people, but this is impossible, he has not even got the necessary word " height " in his language to do this properly, so that his task is as difficult as that of explaining a fourth dimension to us. Suppose Flatlanders to have nerves throughout their bodies, but that only the circumferential ones are in use and cultivated, then it would at any rate not be impossible for their body nerves or, as we should call them, their surface nerves, occasionally to become sensitive in cases of injury or illness. Sound, which travels in the fog, but not in the Flatland film of oil, might now be detected by such a morbidly sensitive Flatlander. This would be a case of Flatland clairvoyance. Then again each Flat- lander is really not a surface but an object, and although he has been assumed to be very thin, there is no difficulty in supposing him to be a really bulky object such as a log of wood, a floating branch or tree, or even an iceberg, provided of course that in each object the sensitive nerves are distributed only along the oil film on the water level, or perhaps that it is only the presence of this thin film of oil which allows the nerves to act. If then two Flat- landers who in this world would be recognised as icebergs, perceived each other through the medium of their Flat- land film of transparent oil, and if they wished to make each other's acquaintance by contact, they would find this to be impossible, for their under water portions, of which Flatlanders, being unable to grasp the idea of depth, have no conception, would knock against each other long before the water level circumference could touch. Similar cases are noticed in this world. Two people, who at a distance attract each other, possibly till they marry, afterwards sometimes evince an inexplicable antipathy. In such cases, "A Square" would probably suggest that the fourth dimen- FLATLAND 17 sions of these people are more bulky tlian their real dimen- sions, and that it is their fourth dimension bulk which keeps them apart. People who can be approached from only one or two sides, who have to be flattered or loved or bribed, would in Flatland be represented by weighted poles, floating about in a slanting position instead of upright. Two such slanting poles would be kept apart in Flatland, that is at the water level, if their upper ends, which project into the fog, or their lower ends which are submerged in mud were to touch ; they can meet, but only on two definite sides, cupidity perhaps or love, whereas intellectually they jar on each other. It may also be assumed that some Flatlanders are con- stituted like water lilies, with stems and roots, the floating leaves of which the real Flatlanders have of course no conception, for these reach deep down below the trans- parent film into the muddy water and into the earth. Several of these Flatlanders, whom one recognises as leaves or flowers, are, without their knowing it, connected with each other by their stems. Then if one Flatlander (a leaf) moves, another has to move too, when disease or death seizes one, the other also languishes, but not neces- sarily always the nearest one. Human beings can explain these matters because they see the stems and common roots, but not the Flatlanders. Yet similar cases are sometimes recorded in our world and are perhaps best exemplified in the legend of the Corsican brothers, who, though separated by space, lived a common life. The connecting link would be the fourth dimension. This might explain telepathy. It is not here intended to suggest the possibility of a fourth dimension; the above cases are merely introduced for the purpose of illustrating the difficulties under which Flatlanders would labour if they tried to explain strange phenomena, which if their's is part of a three-dimensioned world might from time to time be noticed by them. These speculations are not contained in "Flatland," in fact, as 18 UNITY IN NATUKE already stated, that story is very mathematical, but it does finally mention that the Flatland philosopher tries to explain the third dimension by the method adopted by " A Square " with regard to the fourth dimension. He conjures up a new universe of one dimension less than his world , a Line-world in which the individuals can move and feel only along one straight line, they are supposed to communicate with each other by chirping. Here at last is a suggestion which is worth considering. Is not that one dimension world the world of Music? Music has no length, no breadth, no depth, it lives only in time, or as mathematicians would say, it has only one dimension. The imaginary Line-land of a Flatland philosopher is apparently music pure and simple. His views on Line- land are interesting from a mathematical point of view, but being exceedingly limited and difficult to understand, and at best only imaginary, it is in every respect more desirable to leave Line-land, Flatland and Four dimen- sions and to turn to a more real world the world of music. THE NATURE OF MUSIC. THE universe in which music exists is time, and whereas ours is relatively a double universe, consisting of infinite space and everlasting time, music is a single world inde- pendent of space. Subdivisions of time chronicle the events in the physical world as also the sequences of chords and notes in the musical world. Time is therefore com- mon both to the material and to the musical world, and the very natural question arises : Do events in the musical world follow each other with the same certainty as here? Does the law that effect follows cause hold good with music ? And if so, is the chain of chords and notes infinite in the same way as the chain of events, of causes and effects is infinite in this world? In other words is music without beginning or ending? The ready answer, the popular answer, is that every piece of music has a begin- ning and ending, but composers' experiences point to another conclusion, for having hit on a theme they at once find difficulty in dealing with it. They have to prepare an introduction which in turn may want another introduc- tion, and when that matter is settled, they have still greater difficulties in bringing the piece to an end. In fact there is such a sameness about musical endings : just a few conventional chords and then silence, that as regards endings at least there is no need to ask composers, one feels with them that if music were left to itself it would go on for ever, just as a play or novel would have to go on for ever if the public were not agreed that it has to end with the death or the marriage of the hero or heroine. Is it not possible that a musical piece, as the name implies, is but a piece cut out of a musical whole, just as novels, 19 20 UNITY IN NATURE plays and even History are but portions of a never ending life? Authors are certainly put to no end of trouble as regards finding fitting beginnings and endings for their works. It is so difficult to take a small part from a whole and to shape its endings so that they shall produce a harmonious effect. A tree with its branches, twigs and leaves is a complete object and generally a beautiful one, but cut it down and saw the trunk into short logs, in the same way that a historical writer cuts out a period of the life of a nation or of a man, then each log is of the same substance as the tree, but it has two flat ends which indi- cate that it was part of something greater. If the ends are now carved away till they are beautiful it will be found that the bark which beautified the tree is now an eyesore. On removing it the trunk and ends do not har- monise, and the whole block has to be carved into some- thing shapely a statue, an idol. The wood has been idealised. One may still recall that the piece is but a portion of the whole, of a tree, but one would not even be sure which end was top or which was bottom. The same transformation happens in the case of novels, plays and historical sketches. In many novels the introduction consists of a description of the lastingly inanimate, of a field, forest or room, then an animal or human being is introduced and the plot grows. A start is there made from a resting point, from monotonously routine events. Turning to the stage, more particularly to some of Shakespeare's plays, it will be found that some of the first actions are such as might have been going on for a long time. Nothing could well be more monotonous than the weary tramp of the sentry in "Hamlet." "Romeo and Juliet" commences with a foolish talk amongst some lazy servants who are strolling about on a hot day. Antonio, in the " Merchant of Venice," starts by saying what a man in his condition would doubtless have said many times before. He feels sad and restless. The play, "Julius Csesar," commences THE NATURE OF MUSIC 21 with an argument from a tribune, who seems to have been arguing as long as people can remember. Shakespeare's introductions to his historical plays are different; lie evidently assumes that the preceding history is known, and he plunges straight into the essence of the plot. In- troductions have also been omitted in those cases where an early revelation of the plot can be relied upon to carry the audience from everyday thoughts to the events which are now to be placed before them. Troilus mentions at once that he is in love, and with the opening words of Othello one hears that there is hate between him and lago. Racine's Tartuffe opens in the same way and has the additional feature of introducing all but one of the characters in the first few minutes. The same remarks apply to the endings, but here the devices are fewer, cruder or entirely absent. The mere fact that it is time for the audience to go home is a suffi- cient excuse for hurrying the play to an end ; a climax is a favourable point at which to lower the curtain. Gener- ally, however, plays end when the plot is exhausted, when the principal character dies or marries. The audience departs but not with a feeling that the real end has come. Hamlet, Laertes, Ophelia, Polonius, the King, the Queen all die, but Fortinbras' retreating drums are heard as he marches away to seize the vacant throne, Romeo and Juliet die, but the parting speech of the weak-kneed Prince foretells that he will not be able to lay the strife between the two contending houses. Thus every play, every novel, leaves us with a feeling that the events with which it deals are but portions cut out of the infinite sequence of events. It is the same with pieces of music. Their endings have certainly a sameness and an artificial ring about them which leave no doubt that the composer has strained a point to reach the end. Artificially the rhythm and the melody come to a pause together and this being a con- venient point for stopping a stop;is made. 22 UNITY IN NATUEE The beginnings are more varied. There is really no musical reason why a first note should ever be sounded; musically it should grow out of previous notes, therefore, as in certain popular patrols, Hamlet's monotonous sentry tramp is imitated, by sounding a faint distant throbbing, which develops into a more complicated rhythm and as this grows louder it is accompanied by the melody. During this period, the audience, which at first was think- ing and talking of other matters, catches the seemingly distant strain and is all attention when the melody is fully reached. Many pieces, as for instance Beethoven's sym- phony in C minor, commence with the full chords of the main subject, the key being also definitely fixed at the start, a similar beginning to that of Kacine's Tartuffe. The beginnings of the succeeding parts of a symphony are similarly abrupt, but that is more natural, for the preced- ing parts have led up to these. The preceding remarks are likely to be objected to by musical critics and will not be very clear to the mere lovers of music who on the spur of the moment may not be able to conjure up the melodies referred to. One example has therefore been introduced here and because of its popularity it should appeal to all. Then also because of the parallelism of the conditions portrayed by the words and the musical situations being in harmony, this song affords an illustration that both poetical and musical beginnings and endings are not real ones, and a better understanding will it is hoped be gained of what is meant by a parallelism of music and words. The song is that of Elijah in the desert which is so well known that the notes might have been omitted. Its opening is like that of " Hamlet " : silence and monotony ; one hears the prophet's dreary moan. His past history has been an exciting one, but for the time being the man of action is wearying in the boundless, the silent, the parched desert. He is silent while the music has sunk to a mere breath. One sigh escapes him : THE NATURE OF MUSIC 23 It is e - noughl Then remembering that there is no human ear to hear him, only the omnipresent Jehovah, he prays to Him. He modifies his first half despairing, half upbraiding request. =T"fr F '- Lord, now take a - way my life, H r=? -4-*-*- i ^^H- And knowing that it is his lot to live for ever and for ever, he pleads still more fervently For I am not bet - ter than my fa - thers ! Hf^^3^-^f--4f-^gg 24 UNITY IN NATURE This short monologue has awakened Elijah and also the music which here indulges in an independent expression of views. Then he prays in a new vein, he is petulant and even argues with the Lord. f \>-V I de - sire . . to live no long - er ! now let me die, for my days are but van- i - ty. l^lii&ipE^ife5 i -4 i .= V-* He remembers the galling sensation when he found that all his labour has been in vain, he remembers how he had punished the King, defied him and Jezebel and killed Baal's priests. During the passage of these thoughts the melody has risen to a climax and only calms down a little to enable Elijah to recount his activity and each time THE NATURE OF MUSIC 25 that he pauses for breath the music thunders applause and cheers him on. / **p rr = Lord, for the Lord God of Hosts. tirrd r- I J- While recounting these stirring events, Elijah naturally recalls that the Lord's priests have been killed, that he alone of the Lord's champions has survived, that he has had to flee before an infamous woman, that the cause of the God of Israel is lost, that his people is no people, only one tribe of many in the vast Assyrian kingdom, he remembers his idleness and present helplessness and des- pairingly he asks to see death rather than the disappear- ance of a once chosen but now doomed people. With the same desponding words with which he awoke, he sinks down again into the burning sand : 26 UNITY IN NATURE It is e - nough : O Lord, now take away my life. ___ : _. - _ _f.~ 9 ~W 'W ^^-^^^^4^^-^eH frfe ' - := 5 L ^P^-4 1 - r 1 * *- II S f y^9^ k / / The music too has collapsed and in the same weary strain in which it started it now dies out and monotony reigns. The musical beginning and ending of this song, like the words, fulfil very thoroughly the conditions which the public expect. The reigning silence is broken in upon gradually and is reached again naturally. The melody and the song are complete in themselves, and can be sung independently of the rest of the Oratorio, and yet oixe knows that both have been prepared for most elaborately during the preceding hour, and that the end of the song is but the starting point for a new outburst of words and of music. This single example, and no further ones will be attempted, suggests rather than proves that our musical pieces have two artificial ends, that real music may be eternal, without beginning, without ending, and that the musical pieces to which one listens are but fragments. That real music is everlasting is confirmed by Beethoven, who remarked that each of his works was but a fragment, stolen from the harmonious world of music in which his spirit mostly dwelt. It will be noticed that many people affirm that it is impossible for them to grasp the idea of infinite space, of everlasting time. What they probably mean is that they THE NATURE OF MUSIC 27 have a difficulty in believing that infinite space is filled with matter and that they cannot imagine an everlasting sequence of events. The idea of space having a boundary, of time ending or beginning is not so much an absurdity as an impossibility. One need but try to imagine that one's thoughts have reached the outer boundarjr of space, beyond all stars and beyond all matter, then there must be space beyond, the boundary cannot possibly be a mathematical point ; the envelope of a limited space must be yet another space and another beyond it into infinity. Similarly with regard to time, a million or a billion years may pass, and events may be imagined to cease to occur but time itself continues into infinity. When there is no time, the past, the present, and the future would be happening together, and that is inconceivable. It is different in a way with regard to objects in space and events in time. There is no apparent reason why such objects as stars and their satellites should exist, and there is equally no reason why some should exist at distances which the eye cannot reach, but it is certainly not inconceivable that both suns, planets, cosmic gases and dust can exist in every part of space, and that matter too may be infinite in amount. Similarly with regard to events. One sees that objects re-act on each other, and that there is always a reason why, and another cause for that cause, ad infinitum, and therefore it is difficult to conceive a beginning to any sequence of events. Suppose for instance that billions of years ago the Solar system was an inert nebula without motion of any sort, then it would have remained inert for all times, unless a comet from another part of space had penetrated the nebula, and had been arrested. It would set up a slight commotion, act as a centre of attraction and this change would gradu- ally lead to the concentrations of the nebula into suns, stars, and moons. Even here therefore, the beginning of events will have been due to another, an outside event, and searching for its cause, and the cause of that cause, each 28 UNITY IN NATURE successive explanation leads once more to a never ending sequence of past events which led to the comet's travels. Similar remarks apply in the world of music, time in that world is everlasting as it is in ours, and a beginning or an ending of musical events, provided that there must be a musical cause for the sounding of a musical note, is as inconceivable as the sudden appearance in the physical world of a something which was not there before. If a start were made in the middle of a musical piece it would at once be felt that a cause for the notes played is wanted. If a fresh start be made from a few bars earlier, the first played portion is explained but the same feeling reappears with regard to the new start, nor is this feeling in any way diminished until step by step the composer's artificial introduction is reached. The process can also be reversed. If only the first note of a musical piece or its first bar or two are sounded, there will always be the same desire to ask where is the musical cause for these sounds being produced and why do they cease, for they demand the continuation which is not played. If in the physical world a man slips he ought to fall, not to float in the air and similarly in the world of music, if a note is sounded it should be followed by others. Having thus arrived at the conclusion that the general notion is wrong, that real music is of a fragmentary nature, it is permissible to enquire whether the modern tendency to write so called " programme music " is a truly musical one, and whether composers are producing real music when they use it merely for the heightening of poetical effects. The musical instruments with whose help music is conveyed to the hearing are limited in number and in capabilities, and a composer is of course justified in using the human voice if that is the instru- ment he requires, just as he is justified in using any other musical instrument; there can also be no objection to the singing of words, for not only can the' human voice produce its best effects when uttering words, but vowels, because THE NATURE OF MUSIC 29 they are compound sounds, are practically musical chords and as such may be turned to good account. There is, therefore, no reason why words sung by human beings should not be utilised in music either generally or for particular effects, but the case is different with regard to the interrelation of the meanings of words and their accompaniments. It is true that, as in the above song of Elijah, and in many others, the words and the music thoroughly harmonise, but a far greater number of examples could be cited in which they do not harmonise, and if in such cases the music as well as the song senti- ments are powerful, the effect is not pleasing. In fact, composers as a rule fight shy of this combination, grand music being accompanied by a silly libretto, as in the " Zauberfloete " or by incomprehensible words in a foreign tongue. In such cases the real object of introducing words and ideas seems to be to give more detailed assist- ance to an artist for expressing the music than is possible with our musical notation. He understands the language in which he is singing, or at least should do so, and should produce the notes either tenderly, passionately, sorrow- fully, or joyfully, as the libretto demands. Undramatic effects and occasionally intentionally comic effects are pro- duced by songs having many verses but only one tune. In short songs it should always be possible to harmonise the sentiments with the music, but in long pieces, the difficulties at once grow so serious that efforts to effect this harmony cannot be sustained. Words, and especially actions, if they are to appeal to an audience, must be sensible, cause and effect must follow each other as nearly as possible as they would do in real life, in other words the libretto should be as perfect as a theatrical play. Now if two particular melodies just suit two particular actions or sentiments, the former ought to change when the latter change, but this is more easily said than done. A passing event may change Hamlet from a dreamy philosopher into a vicious fiend, but that passing event will not necessarily 30 UNITY IN NATURE change the melody which is expressive of the one mood into another melody which is expressive of the other. In such cases the composer has three courses open to him. He may drag out the stage events so as to give sufficient time for the music to change from one mood to another, he may let his music develop as it likes and not trouble whether it accurately suits the changes on the stage, or he may throw musical sequence to the winds and change the tune whenever this is necessitated by what goes on on the stage or in the song. Carmen illustrates this last method. In that opera each character seems labelled with his own particular melody, and except that the actors do not appear together, and do not all sing together, the effect is somewhat similar to that produced by a number of singing birds e.g., the canary, the nightingale, the corncrake, the thrush, the peacock, etc. Each in turn sings his own song. In such operas, there are frequently, what might be called, scuffles in the orchestra during which the necessary changes from one melody to the other are effected. With catchy melodies the public readily forgive a musical impossibility, but they grow visibly impatient when the difficulties are more apparent than the means of over- coming them. Nowhere is this more apparent than in musical death scenes. In such cases the climax is reached when the dagger is plunged into the hero's heart, and generally this is associated with a musical climax, but unfortunately this climax seems incapable of changing suddenly into the silence of death, the musical death gurgle : final chords, are wanting, therefore the physically dead man has to go on singing his very best for a long time, whereas in real life the flow of blood, and the agony of death preclude this possibility. Wagner has elaborated a method of getting over these difficulties which is both ingenious and effective. He prepares his audience from the very start to expect sudden discords and transitions into other keys and other themes. His music is, as it were, sitting on the fence, and ready to THE NATURE OF MUSIC 31 jump or fall to which ever side events drive it. The effect is certainly dramatic, but take away the scenery and the acting and the result is far from musically satisfac- tory, and although his music is full of harmony and discords one cannot help wondering whether his is what__ might be called real music. A similar unsettling effect is produced by so called programme music, which suits the critics because they can refer the public to the various motives by name, just as they can refer to the words of an opera, when discussing the melody, but the test of real music will always be whether it can stand alone without verbal explanations, and judged by this standard much modern music seems distinctly unreal. There can, of course, be no doubt that actions and situations of real life do inspire composers with musical ideas, but when once a start has been made with the piece, the melody, if developed along natural lines, will not be a portrait of real life conditions. Thus after Beethoven had written Fidelio, and he never wrote another opera, he possibly felt that its music had not developed as it should. He wrote an overture in which he allowed his musical feelings freef scope. Even that did not please him, and he tried again and again, and the result is his grand " Leonora," a piece of pure music which has been inspired by the contemplation of the heroic fidelity of a loving wife, but which does not narrate the successive events even of the opera. There is no dictionary word which even remotely expresses the com- bined love, courage, perseverance and sagacity of the heroine, but to Beethoven this want is apparently supplied by the third of the four overtures to this opera. Strauss, either by natural inclination or in order to please the critics, goes to the trouble of explaining what musical labels he has attached to certain individuals, tendencies or conditions, but listening, for instance, to his Symphonic Domestica while reading his account of the meanings of the several melodies, one cannot but help 32 UNITY IN NATUEE being struck with a feeling that the process is an arbitrary and artificial one, and from a musical point of view, degrading. It is all very well to say that a certain melody represents the father, another the mother, and a third the child, but the text fits the music better when these melodies are labelled Host, Guests, and Foodstuffs of a dinner party, and therefore one cannot believe in the reality of the offered explanations. Although one may be amused, one loses the enjoyment of an otherwise very charming piece. The account would roughly be as follows. The opening bars represent a dissatisfied petulant condition, as if the host and the cook were grumbling at the non-arrival of some guests and the spoiling of the soup and fish. At last the guest motive is heard, signifying the arrival of the late comers, one almost hears them say " how-doo-doo ! how-doo-doo ! how-doo- doo !" and the music goes on pleasantly while soup and sherry, fish and hock, etc., are being served. Things gradually change, and the concluding bars very faithfully represent the changing humours of the men over their wine and cigars. Why, if music is intended to illustrate mundane events, has no composer of programme music written a dinner symphony? If melodies can portray physical objects, surely some could be found to suit the gliding sensation of a descending oyster, the more piquant effect of white- bait, and dignity of solid turbot or salmon. Expressive music might also be found for the many thick and clear soups, for various white and dark meats, for sweets, ices, coffee, cigars, and wine. Composers, no doubt, will say that this would be degrading music, but surely if music is to be descriptive it would be better to describe the pleasant sensation of eating and drinking than of babies crying in their cradles or the more dramatic ones of loving and hating. It is, of course, not intended to suggest that music should be written on these lines, on the contrary these THE NATURE OF MUSIC 33 possibilities have been adduced as warnings against the modern tendency to associate melodies with definite actions. One might as well, and this has been seriously proposed, associate certain notes and chords with colours. It is therefore encouraging to find amongst' truly musical people, who listen to music because they enjoy it, and not in order to understand and if necessary criticise it, that they confess that after all there is no music like that which is represented by, for instance, Beethoven's com- positions, in which development is natural and along simple lines, which gives the impression that the sequence of the various melodies and their interactions are correctly sketched, as are the actions in any life-like drama. They feel that in the same way as there is cause and effect in the physical world, so also there is cause and effect in the musical world. The material world has its laws of nature and so has the musical world. LAWS NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL. Let it be assumed that, as was suggested in the last chapter, Beethoven was right, in his feeling about the independence of music, then, on examining not only his music but any music, it will be found that it is not necessarily swayed by the programme, but that it is governed by certain laws, as everything in the material world is governed by the laws of nature, and a very definite parallelism is thereby revealed between the world of music and the material world. This world exists in space and in time, whereas music has but the single universe: time. The sequence of events in this physical world is infinite and is infinite also in the world of music. This world is governed by the unalterable laws of nature, the world of music is also governed by the laws of harmony. Are these unalterable? Or are they arbitrary conventionalities like the laws of nations and the regula- tions of society? And what is the nature of these human laws? In a constitutional empire the laws are not unchangeable, yet slaves and serfs would be inclined to imagine that the laws of a State are like the forces of nature, that they are ever present, unalterable. Their only remedy for sufferings is to break the laws, the remedy of freemen is to alter them. But even to the average man, laws are practically unalter- able, for they are surrounded by much complicated machinery, such as police, prosecutors, clients, advocates, judges, prerogatives, etc., and they would not readily serve as an illustration of the nature of alterable laws. Social codes, customs, and regulations, although more change- able, are in their growth governed by some almost natural 34 LAWS NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL 35 law, so much, so that their arbitrary character is nearly lost to sight, and their nature is difficult to unravel. It is therefore better not to deal with these complications but to turn to those simple laws which can be invented at any time and at any place ; the laws which govern games r Of games, one of the most ancient is chess. The fundamental law of this game is one which it has in common with music, according to which all moves have to be made on stepping stones, as it were. There is no gradual movement like the marching of troops in actual war, or in the now common Kriegspiel of military clubs. Each chess figure has to be moved from one square to another square, just as moves in music are made by striking first one note and then another. A violinist must not slide his fingers along the strings in search of the right notes, he must hit the right position with extra- ordinary exactitude, for errors of only 1 / 300 of an inch can be detected by some human ears, and any one who misses the right position by 1 / 32 inch is simply a very bad player. For convenience, the keys of a piano are made of considerable width, but each key represents an absolutely definite note, a single point in a long line of possible ones, and similarly each square of a chess board, although it is large enough to hold a chess man, represents only his theoretical position at the absolute centre of the square. He is in suspense while being moved from one place to another, he does not walk or glide, he disappears from one square of the chess board, his world, and re- appears on another. The next law of this game is that it must be played on a board which is divided into 64 squares. This is an arbitrary law, for the Japanese chess is played on a board with 144 squares. Then there is a law or set of laws according to which the chessmen must at first be placed on the two pairs of lines of squares at the ends of the board. Then there are a few simple laws as to the move- ments of chessmen. Then there is the law which mav be 36 UNITY IN NATURE called the law of life to the game : that a move must be made first by one side and then by another, and not simultaneously as in war. Although all these laws are ancient, history mentions that they have been altered from time to time. Formerly the queen could make no other moves than the king makes, now she can move almost anywhere. Castling is a comparatively modern innovation. The numerous problems published in our journals show that one set of laws is constantly being altered, for instead of placing all the chessmen in their proper places, only a few are used, and these are placed where desired. It will, of course, be urged that these chess problems are merely endings of games and also that the players accept the conditions. This, however, is not quite true of a method of playing which seems to have nearly or quite died out. If players agree, the laws about the placing of the chessmen may be practically suspended, except as regards the pawns, these should be placed on their proper squares, but each player may place the other men where he likes, the placing being done either move for move, which gives a slight disadvantage to the first mover, or the placing may be done on either side of a screen, as in the case of military war games. Under the screen condition the now customary formation will generally be found to be the safest. Let it be assumed that the players do not know the game and make wrong moves, that the queen is placed opposite the king, that the two bishops are found to be moving on the same set of squares, that the king moves into check without any declaration that the game is ended. If these things are done, then the players are not playing chess, but a game of their own, and if they are not agreed, then the game is sure to result in a quarrel. In order that their struggles shall be confined to the board and shall not result in angry words and blows, these players will soon find it necessary to agree on some very LAWS NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL 37 definite rules, which, if broken make the game " no game." It may safely be said that every law, rule, or regulation, whether applicable to criminal actions, commercial deal- ings, or social functions, including games, is based on the principles that the very natural tendency of human beings to wrestle with each other, to test their powers and if possible prove their own superiority, shall be carried out within well defined boundaries. Wrestling, a very natural and healthy pastime, has its varied laws which aim at reducing the chances of real strife and of deadly injury. There are the classical rules, catch-as-catch-can, permission to kick, to hit, and in Japan, to throttle. In the respective districts everybody knows these rules and is prepared for emergencies, to overstep these rules may mean murder, and that is dealt with by the more drastic criminal laws. Fencing and duelling are carried out on the same lines; the game is a more exciting one because the object is the death or injury of one opponent, but here, too, if the victor has won the game by breaking its rules he may have to pay for it even with his life, seconds and witnesses being provided for the purpose of reducing such mischances. They are there to see " fair play," to see that the rules of the game are adhered to. To English- men, it always appears strange that constitutional laws should permit fatal duels, for here one lives under the impression that the first object of a State must be to protect life, and an individual who in his breast can harbour deadly hate against a compatriot is a born criminal and should, one would think, be locked up out of touch with the rest of the world. The very natural desire of most men to grow rich, and for rich men to parade the skill which has made them what they are, leads to all sorts of hazard games. Any one who breaks their laws is called a cheat. If a specu- lator, while keeping within the laws of the land, breaks through customs of the trade, which are merely laws of 38 UNITY IN NATURE the game, he is called a swindler and the business world shuns him ; in case of the more serious infraction of the law of the land he is classed with thieves and goes to prison. If these speculator games are carried so far as to cause injury to the nation, the nation generally alters its own laws to suit the changed circumstances, and one sees that trusts and combines have been attacked probably from before the days of Joseph in Egypt, and monopolies of trades and of professions have since time immemorial led to revolutions. Laws of games are thus seen to be mere conventions amongst the players, if they are broken then the game is not the game, people refuse to play under such conditions, and if money or life is at stake, the police are called in. In less serious cases umpires are asked to decide. A social circle, though much larger than a chess board, is yet an insignificantly small world within a greater world; the social game is played like all others, in strict conformity with social laws ; he who does not play the game in accordance with these laws is not in the game, he is a social outcast. Europeans differ from the Chinese, who have codified their 3,000 social laws; our social laws are kept as secret as can be, or rather they are reconsti- tuted with each new generation, and it is the knowledge of these laws which constitutes the passport into one of the numerous small circles called society. The high cannot enter the society of the low, nor the low into the society of the high. One may learn the correct slang of a group of workmen, one may drink with them and live with them, but one remains an outsider and may perhaps be despised or taken for an outcast from one's own circle. The nouveau riche may do his best to imitate the nobility, but the mere fact of being a copyist amongst a class who profess to lead in social matters, is an infraction of the law of the social game. Here again it is seen that the petrified and numerous Chinese social rules and our own unwritten ones are merely conventions between indivi- LAWS NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL 39 duals. This is true also of national laws, both criminal and civil. The past growth of the idea of property, implied conventions between individuals to respect it. As these conventions increased in number and importance they had to be enforced on a uniform principle, they_ had to be codified, and judges, prosecutors, and police were created to deal with those who did not conform with the rules of the game; they are the umpires of the game with powers to declare offenders to be " off side," as in football, and to place them in prison. In no country, except in ancient Rome, has the growth of laws been as natural as in England, especially in, commercial circles, where customs of the trade are recognised by judges as being of the nature of statutes, and are possibly based on real laws of nature and there- fore not to be meddled with except at the peril of the State. Most laws, however, are inventions. Several Greeks tried their hands at this pastime, generally, with dismal results, Plato's double fiasco with his scheme called " Republic " being the best known. The Roman Emperors were law makers, but their edicts were rather of the nature of acceptances of customs which had gradually grown into prominence, than mere inventions. Herein one may perhaps see the reason why the Roman laws have been the patterns after which many modern ones have been designed. The Americans and the French tried their hand at law making or inventing constitutions, and it is but natural that they should have been swayed by their past experiences. The French had suffered from the feudal system which led to the accumulation of vast properties in single hands, naturally therefore they made laws for sub-dividing property. They overlooked the natural law that a certain piece of ground cannot support more than a certain number of individuals, and the result has been that a naturally enterprising people like the Franks has degenerated into a stationary one. The 40 UNITY IN NATUEE Americans seem to have been swayed by a morbid dread not only of a one man power, but also of oligarchies, they banished the idea of an aristocracy and saddled them- selves with a plutocracy which has grown to be a recognised state danger. It rarely happens that a law-giver comes in conflict with the physical laws of nature, but there is at least one picturesque illustration of such a case. A monarch who had made and unmade laws over Spain, Germany, and Italy, and to whom laws must have seemed as fleeting as the breath which gave them life, Charles Y. who had had his own way ever since he was a boy, had become so spoiled that he thought he could lord it over poor simple pendulums, clocks having just been invented. He is found in his old age trying to synchronise their beats, but even in this little matter he, the past Emperor of millions, had absolutely no influence. Impotently he stood facing a few wall clocks which went their own way in spite of his powerful will. The sight is more humilitating even than that of Don Quixote tilting against windmills, which was a case of human strength pitted against aerial strength in which the weaker power was worsted. Charles Y.'s example merely illustrates how the ignorant conceit born out of making and breaking laws leads to a belief that laws of nature can also be made or broken. Laws of nature have to be studied and taken into account, they can then be made subservient to the aims of humanity, but they will not allow themselves to be brushed aside, they will not be ignored. If a chemist were to insist that two elements which have no affinity for each other must combine if placed together, he would be laughed at, their juxtaposition would merely accentuate differences. If an engineer were to think of stopping the flow of a river, say by building a dam, he would be cursed by his neigh- bours for flooding their lands, and he would ruin all the millers who had been utilising the stream for power; if, however, he built more mills than the river could supply LAWS NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL 41 with water lie would be laughed at for his pains ; and yet these are the very things which monarchs and national assemblies do day by day, if generations are counted as days. The failures born of ignorance of the fathers lead to equal failures in the next generation, but in opposite directions,- and nations either prosper or degenerate according as to whether or not there is a slight balance in favour of con- formity with natural laws. The subject could be fitly illustrated by the rise and fall of the Roman Empire were it not too vast a subject even to be glanced at, in fact the very slow oscillation of nations governed by oligarchies is not easily studied, but the doings of small republics like those of the Greek towns, or of absolute monarchies are most instructive reading. Thus in Sweden one has a very clear example of an attempt to force a pendulum into an unnatural beat. The Swedes had settled on the shores of the Baltic, a most ideal position for a hard working, commerce and industry loving people, for although ancient Scandinavia must have been terribly exhausted by emigrations, of which Normandy remained the most lasting monument, the Swedes had again attained a commanding position at the time of the Reformation. To a restless spirit like Gustav Adolf the idea of utilising the power created by commerce and industry of a great people for the glorious object of war and supremacy in the council of nations was naturally so inviting that he overlooked the fact that a stream which has been led into numerous artificial channels for irrigation purposes, cannot at one and the same time be concentrated into one course for power purposes. He forgot that industry and commerce, relying as they do on security, cannot expand under conditions of warfare but must gradually die. Unfortunately for Sweden the lessons which should have been drawn from Gustav Adolf's experiment made abso- lutely no impression on Charles XII, who, while he was yet a mere boy, started on successful campaigns which resulted in reducing his once flourishing empire into a 42 UNITY IN NATURE sparsely populated province. Few monarchs except per- haps our own. Stuarts have defied so many laws of nature as he did, one of his last acts being the debasement of his coinage, his majesty being pleased to believe that if the royal image were imprinted on brass buttons they would have the value of golden crowns. German history is full of records of attempts to make pendulums swing in unnatural beats. Almost before Charlemagne had secured his empire from invasion and had initiated reforms which would have resulted in peace, industry and thrift, did he invent the feudal system which for many centuries prevented the Germanic tribes from becoming civilised. Henry reverted to the more natural conditions, but his son and grandson in their anxiety to emulate Charlemagne, CaBsar and Alexander as regards World Empire refused to believe that prosperity cannot increase during the wasteful process of war, and in their mad desire to dictate a world policy and to possess Rome, the ancient capital of a World Empire, they practically pawned away the whole of Saxony and Germany to feudal prelates and warriors. Fortunately for England similar dreams about World Empire indulged in by Edward III. and Henry Y. were utter failures, but it must not be imagined that our modern statesmen are not even now standing in front of obstinate clocks which will rather stop than swing as they are told. English politicians may be correct in their view that the World Empire ideas which wrecked Home, and France and ancient Germany, if persisted in will wreck both Germany and Russia, but they appear to be blind to the fact that the life of a nation follows natural laws which have to be studied but which cannot be altered. If it be desired that a pendulum shall swing and serve a useful purpose, no good but much harm is done by per- petually shaking the clock into unnatural activity, or by ^adening the beat by restrictive friction. If it be LAWS NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL 43 natural for England and her Colonies to unite it is harmful to try and obstruct this movement. The art of weaving deserves attention, not only because it illustrates what is meant by an intermixture of natural and artificial laws, but also because it may help to a better- understanding of music, to which weaving is slightly related, and about which, as will have been gathered from the previous chapter, some uncertainty must always prevail as to whether it is a real world, independent of all human influences or whether these influences seriously affect its working. Ordinary fabrics consist of warp and weft. The threads which extend lengthways are called warp, and weft are the cross threads. If the one set were coloured white and the other black, then, in a simple cloth, the two sets of threads could be readily distinguished with the help of a magnifying glass and the surface would look ]ike a chess board. By arranging the warp and weft differently various types of cloth can be produced, and the art of weaving or of designing woven goods is thus easily seen to be similar to a very elaborate game in which the weft is threaded above and below the warp in strict con- formity with a preconceived design, which here stand for arbitrary human rules or laws. This game is of the nature of "patience," for opposing designers are not at work, each person creates and surmounts his own difficul- ties. The charm and difficulty of the game lies in the fact that it is not like an ordinary one in which there are only arbitrary human rules or laws, but that natural laws, laws which cannot be broken without making the cloth no cloth, are met with at every turn. These natural laws are very simple and therefore leave an enormous amount of latitude to the designer, to the ordainer of artificial laws, but just because of this latitude the number of designs grows enormous, more particularly if one allows weaving to embrace both weaving proper and basket making in which both warp and weft are used, 44 UNITY IN NATURE as well as knitting, crocheting and netting in which only one thread is used, and lace-making in which many threads are used. Here it appears desirable to confine attention to a mere sketch of one branch, for instance, weaving proper, using only warp and weft. In a weaving machine the warp threads have been threaded through a number of mails and are stretched horizontally between two rollers, the one winding up the newly made cloth as the weaving progresses, the other unwinding the warp. A certain number of warp threads are now lifted by the mails and a shuttle is shot across between the upper and lower warp, leaving a cross thread, the weft, which, after the warps are closed again, appears 011 the underside of those threads which were lifted and 011 the upper side of those which were lowered. Another set of warp threads are now lifted by means of their mails, another weft introduced and the manufacturing process continues. The designer decides which warps are to be lifted and the order of their succession. If he arranges that alternately the odd and even warps shall be raised then a plain sailcloth, calico or cambric is the result. If he arranges several adjoining warps to be lifted together and also decides that with each throw of the shuttle these sets of lifted warps shall advance one step to the right or left, then the result is a twill. Now here he will meet with a very important law of nature, or rather of weaving, he will find that if he raises more than a certain number of warp at one time, or continues to raise one warp more than a certain number of times, there will be no cohesion in the fabric. The same natural law limits the designer's liberty in the case of satins, sateens, and large pattern designs. Should the designer decide to raise eleven warp in the following order, 1, 5, 9, then 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, then 3, 7, 11, then 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, then as at first 1, 5, 9, etc., it will be found that the machine is turning out an upper and lower cloth, and what is more, the two LAWS NATUBAL AND ARTIFICIAL 45 are joined at the edges and form a tube, as in the well known cases of canvas watering hoses and tubular lamp wicks. By altering the order in which the above men- tioned lots are lifted, the second and third lot being changed to third and second, only one edge is now joined, which means that the loom is weaving a cloth double its own width but folded. If desired the cloth could be woven in many folds and made many times wider than the loom, but here one is hampered with another natural law, according to which the warp will not stand being pulled past its neighbours two, three, or four times more than is necessary with single cloths, unless it be made very strong and very smooth. This frictional wear is the reason why even in single cloths the warp has to be coated with a starchy substance which reduces the chafing effect, and here too human nature in a not very pleasing garb steps in. The size, which by the best weavers is made of sago, may be made of starch which, as it lends itself to being loaded with heavy earths and hygroscopic salts, permits of producing a finished article which looks sub- stantial but grows flimsy the first time it is washed. Seeing how several layers of cloth can be woven simul- taneously on one machine, it is but natural that by intro- ducing slight departures from the above mentioned order of raising the warp some intermediate threads of the upper cloth will mingle with the lower one and vice versa, whereby the two cloths, or both sides of the tube, become interlaced into one thick cloth. By this means a material can be produced of which the face may differ entirely from the reverse. Even while leaving out of account all pattern designs, such as are found on table cloths, etc., it can be shown that by changing the order of lifting the warp, by using different thicknesses of threads and different materials, linen, cotton, wool, and silk, a multitude of different textures can be produced, each one being an illustration, a manifestation of the particular artificial human law 46 UNITY IN NATURE which in weaving is called the design, yet all these designs must be in accord with other natural and never changing laws, as regards strengths of threads, and as regards the order of raising the warp, otherwise the fabric is not a fabric. By going a step further and introducing coloured threads, a few more natural laws have to be kept in mind, but, at the same time, the number of possible designs will be vastly increased. To be able to reproduce varied effects is the business of the designer, but unless he has acquired the knowledge which grows out of practical experience at the loom, he is sure to make costly mistakes. Now that Pianolas and similar piano-playing devices have become familiar objects, it is easier to explain some of the laws of music as compared with those of fabrics than would otherwise have been the case. The perfora- tions in the pianola papers are in fact produced ,by the same mechanism, like a Jacquard box which in looms effects the raising and the lowering of warp, the perfora- tions in the paper, representing the depressed warp, and the unperf orated lines the raised warp ; but of course a fabric woven from a pianola pattern would not hold together, because the natural laws of music are not the natural laws of weaving. Now if all music were written in the major C scale in which only the white keys of the piano are played, then the present musical notation would correctly represent a pianola paper, except that the notes instead of being oval would be dashes, the full notes being twice as long as the half notes, etc., but in addition to the white piano keys there are the black ones which have to be played when other scales are used, and these are indicated in the ordinary musical notation by sharps (ft) or flats ([,). A notation which would be in strict agreement with the piano keys and the pianola strips would be as shown in the following sketch headed chromatic notation. LAWS NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL CHROMATIC NOTATION. 47 /_ i i _ . * =3 j J J ' ' g ! l - ORDINARY NOTATION. CHROMATIC NOTATION. ORDINARY NOTATION. The two lower sets of lines and notes are the ordinary notation of the C major scale and are placed there for the sake of comparison. In the chromatic notation, which should be held left side up to make it agree with the piano keys, each black line represents a black piano key, each narrow blank space represents a single white piano key, 48 UNITY IN NATUKE and each, wide space represents two white keys. The C major scale notes would therefore, as on the piano, fall on the white spaces. This chromatic notation, in which all the notes of the piano are represented by equi-distant spaces is therefore a miniature copy of the pianola paper strips and every note means that a particular piano key has to be depressed, or if the piano were a weaving machine, it would mean that a certain warp has to be depressed. The musical distance between two notes on the chro- matic scale is called a semi-tone, which in the chromatic notation is represented by a step from a black line to the adjoining white space or vice versa. The musical pitch of a note depends, as is well known, on the number of vibrations which strike the ear in one second. Thus, supposing that for any particular note the number of vibrations per second is 100, then the first octave of this note has 200 vibrations, its second octave 400 and its third octave 800, its fourth octave 1,600, etc. The number of vibrations is doubled for each higher octave. In order to produce this doubling, for instance on a violin string, its length has to be halved, and that halved, and that again. Thus the lengths of the vibrating strings grow shorter while the number of vibrations grows greater. On the piano, and in the above-sketched chro- matic notation, the two opposing changes are combined as it were, and the distances between successive octaves are all made equal. This is merely a matter of conveni- ence, but it is a great convenience both for playing and for writing music, for as there are 12 semi-tone intervals in one octave, each piano octave need only be divided into 12 equal parts, and the result is twelve tempered or chro- matic notes which are all equi-distant from each other. This subdivision cannot be carried out in so simple a manner when dealing with the number of vibrations, nor with the violin strings, for if, for instance, the first octave from 100 to 200 vibrations were to be divided into twelve LAWS NATUEAL AND ARTIFICIAL 49 equal parts, each step would give 8J additional vibrations, but no sooner has the first octave been reached than the similar subdivisions of the next octave extending from 200 to 400 vibrations would require 16f additional vibra- tions for each higher note, and a sudden jump from an" interval of 8J to 16f is evidently not correct. What i& wanted is a steady increase in percentages, in fact the problem of producing a tempered scale is one of compound interest. Now the capital of 100 doubles itself in twelve successive years if the compound interest is fixed at 5 '95 per cent., or nearly 6 per cent., therefore in order that the twelfth note shall have exactly twice as many vibrations as the first, each successive note on the piano must also have 5*95 per cent, more vibrations than the next lowest one. Thus starting with 100 vibrations for one note on the piano, the next has 100 x 1'0595 = 105*95, the next has 105-95x1-0595 -112-25, the next has 112'25 x T0595- 118'93, etc. The numerical increases of vibrations from note to note being 5'95, 6'30, 6'68, etc. The strings of a piano are tuned in strict accordance with this compound interest principle, and the notes,, which are absolutely equi-distant as regards musical pitch, have received the name of tempered notes. Now it is well known that the notes either of the major and minor scale are not equi-distant, five semi-tones having to be skipped in one octave, and other minor irregularities exist. By a curious coincidence, or rather on account of the happy selection of 12 semi-tones in the tempered scale, all the harmonic notes agree very closely with one or the other of the tempered ones. This is evident from the following table, in which under the columns "relative vibrations' y are given the numbers of vibrations, C being taken as unity. 50 UNITY IN NATURE TABLE RELATIVE NUMBER OF VIBRATIONS IN THE TEMPERED AND IN THE HARMONIC SCALES. Minor Scale. Notation. Tempered Scale Major Scale. Ascending. Descending. Vibrations. Vibrations. Error per cent. Vibrations. Error per cent. Vibrations. Error per cent C i-oooo 1 1-0000 1 1-0000 1 1-0000 |c, \>d 1-0595 ... d 1-1225 9/8 1-125 b3'7 9/8 1'125 b3'7 9/8 1-125 b3'7 |rf, \>e 1-1892 6/5 1-2 b!5'3 6/5 1-2 b!5'3 e "2599 5/4 1-25 flS-2 f 3348 4/3 1-333.. fl-9 4/3 1-333.. #1-9 4/3 1-333.. #1-9 \f,\>9 4142 9 4983 3/2 1-5 bi-9 3/2 1-5 bl'9 3/2 1-5 bi'9 $$> b a 5874 8/5 1-6 b J 3'3 a 6818 5/3 1-666.. #14-1 5/3 1-666.. #14-1 j .. |a, \>b 7818 . i 9/5 1-8 bl7'l b 8877 15/8 1-875 #11-3 15/8 1-875 #11-3 ' .. c 2-0000 2 2-0 2 2-0 2 2-0 Note. The numbers in the three columns headed "Error" are the amounts expressed in percentages of semitones, by which the tempered tones differ from the harmonic ones ; |y indicating that the tempered tone is flat, | that it is sharp. . It will be seen that these errors, although small, vary considerably for the different notes. They are smallest for the seconds, fourths and fifths. It will also be noticed that the tempered notes are nearly all sharper than those of the major scale, and flatter than those of the minor one, which causes a disturbing effect while singing to a piano- forte accompaniment. Thus it will be seen that although the musical octave has been divided by semi-tones into 12 equi-distant parts, the truly harmonic notes are not separated from each other by exact single or double semi-tones. The lines and spaces of the notation shown in the previous sketch should therefore not be absolutely equi-distant, but should vary LAWS NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL 51 according as to whether the major or minor scale is being played. These limitations and corrections must strike one as being very arbitrary. Why, is almost the natural ques- tion, cannot musicians content themselves with a tempered scale of twelve equi-distant semitones? Why must they have an arbitrary system of vulgar fractions ? The reply is that the tempered scale is arbitrary, whereas the arrangement after vulgar fractions is one of the natural laws of the world of music which even the composer cannot alter. This law has its counterpart in the weav- ing, for instance of carpets, in which the warp is not uniformly spaced, because it consists of hard strings and loose woollen threads, the one set being closely packed, the other wide apart. Remove the threads and the fabric is not a carpet, but rather a blanket, remove the simple numerical relation of vibrations in music and there is no music, there is mere noise. There is no reason for this simple relationship, this natural law, in the musical world, as there is no reason in our material world for gravity, heat, electricity, and their relations; they are nature's laws, unalterable, inex- plicable. One may, however, enquire what these laws are. It has been found that the simultaneous sounding of two notes has a most disagreeable aural effect except when the ratios of the vibrations of the two notes stand in some such simple numerical relation as can be represented by vulgar fractions, no larger numbers than six being used. It is also a matter of experience that the disagreeable sensation increases in intensity the nearer these simple relations are approached without being actually reached. The worst effects result when a pair of notes have approached each other to within a quarter or an eighth of a semi-tone. Perfect concord is thus fenced off by walls of disagreeable discord. The simplest ratio of vibrations is one to two, the second note is called the octave of the first because, although 52 UNITY IN NATURE there are twelve semi-tones, there are only eight real notes in the scale from one to the other. Another simple relation is two to three, or one to 3/2. In this case the second note is the fifth of the first note, because there are five scale notes from the one to the other. In the case of thirds the ratio is either one to 5/4 or one to 6/5. Now 1, 5/4 and 3/2 can be sounded together harmoniously, for whatever pair is selected for comparison, their ratios can be expressed in vulgar fractions using no higher numerals than six. The same is true for the three notes 1, 6/5 and 3/2. The one combination is called the major chord, the other is called the minor chord. By advancing or de- scending in fifths from any of these notes, i.e., by multi- plying or dividing the numbers of vibrations of the three notes in either chord by 3/2, all the notes of the major and minor scales are created. In music only these and.no other notes may be played, unless a change of key is carried out. The same law holds good in the new key. It is thus seen that music resembles the game of chess in so far as that the notes, like the chessmen, are in suspense, unless they are struck or placed in position, and their positions are absolutely fixed by the laws of the musical world over which composers have no control. A note may not be gradually approached across its discordant barrier, it must not be felt for, it must be sounded correctly or not at all. The "attack" should be perfect. Playing music is like moving on stepping stones, and differs entirely from actions in this world in which movements are all gliding processes. Thus a melody may move from C to D or to E by disappearing as one note and reappearing as another, but objects of the material world, including human beings, move gradually and not in jerks. A journey from London to Paris is a gradual process, the traveller does not disappear in London, vanish into thin air, and then reappear out of nothing in Paris. If he did he would belong to another world; he would be a LAWS NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL 53 ghost. In this sense musical notes are ghosts ; they dis- appear and reappear and yet they exist. A glance at the last table would almost suggest that there are two musical worlds, a major and a minor, and that the inhabitants, the melodies, of the one cannot reach the other. It would even seem as if there were many musical worlds, each scale representing a different one, and a melody played in one key could never, except by some unmusical process, appear in another key. That is not the case, or at least the music which one hears and which one enjoys, frequently changes from one key to another. The process by which this is effected is called a transition and is carried out as follows : A chord is sounded, for instance, that of C major : c, e, g (1, 5/4, 3/2), then another note, generally the seventh is introduced as for instance b flat (16/9 or 1*777 . . .) which is the fourth of the fourth. It creates a discordant effect on the ear, for it is in harmony only with the absent f . Now the ear seems to be all attention as to why this departure is being made; then follows the chord f, a, e (4/3, 5/3, 2), in which at least one note also harmonises with b flat, and thus suddenly one finds oneself in the ~F major scale, of which b flat is the fourth. This particular transition can be repeated 12 times and should then lead back to the C major scale, but the process is not perfect, and it will be found that the new scale is one-fifth of a semi-tone lower than that from which the start was made. Twelve transitions to the fifth lead to a better result, the new C scale being only 2 per cent, of a semi-tone higher than the original one, and this is the plan adopted when tuning pianos. Other transitions lead to other notes, including those of the minor scale, and others bring one back to the major. It is quite evident therefore that, without breaking any natural laws of the musical world, provided of course, that the transition rules are natural laws, almost any note can be reached, but the correct number of vibrations differs slightly 54 UNITY IN NATURE according to the path, trodden. It will thus be seen that the spacing of the musical warp which is represented by the black lines in the chromatic notation may by repeated transitions be shifted bodily, and lines in any musical notation must therefore only be looked on as being an approximate indication of position. It is, of course, possible that the transition chords are mere human inventions, devices for introducing changes which the imperfections of instruments have made neces- sary, or at least desirable, and may be likened to the changing of scenes and of time on a theatre stage. Such changes do not, of course, occur in real life, and certain playwrights, notably Moliere, adhered in their plays to the principle of maintaining unity of place and time, their actions not extending beyond a few hours. This is more consistent than such frequent changes as occur, for instance, in "Hamlet" and similar plays, but Shakespeare, by limiting himself neither to the one scene, nor to one time was able to portray real life far more effectively than he could have done had he started with the resolve of being strictly true to nature. The same may be the case in the world of music, change of key, corresponding to change of scenes, may not be strictly musical, but this is perhaps the best means of making one feel what real music is. Glancing over books on harmony, counterpoint and musical composition generally, a host of musical prohibi- tions or laws are found, compared with which the few natural laws of weaving sink into insignificance. It is for instance stated that a single part should never proceed by any augmented interval, and if it proceeds by a diminished interval, it must return to some note within that interval. This restriction is not very serious, which means that a single part melody may move about almost as the composer likes it to move, provided he adheres to the notes on one scale. The case is different in music with several parts, then LAWS NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL 55 no two parts may proceed with each other in unison, seconds, fifths, sevenths, or octaves, and no part may proceed in fourths with the bass. Here are already very numerous and serious restrictions. Thus, if the C major scale be selected, one is debarred from playing on the black notes, or on the chromatic notation sketched above, no notes may be placed on the black lines. Certain chords may be played, but they must be changed in accordance with the laws just mentioned. In other words, one is not allowed to play even on all the white notes. Then there follows a string of further natural laws ; if they are broken the result is not music but noise ; one has left the world of music. Thus the upper and lower parts may not proceed by similar motion from another interval to a perfect fifth, nor may they proceed by similar motion to unison or to an octave. A lower part should not proceed to a higher note in one chord than the note assigned to a higher part in the previous chord, and vice versa. Extreme parts should not proceed from the eighth to the eighth between the tonic and the dominant; in a common chord the leading note may not be doubled; and the common chord of the second of the key may not be followed by the common chord of the key note ; the bass may not approach a second inversion by a leap from the inversion of another chord ; only the key note and the dominant may be employed as pedals ; a passing note must be approached and quitted by the step of a second ; except in a few cases a suspended discord may not be sounded together with the note upon which it is resolved; false relations are not allowed, etc., etc. Of course these rules are mere words to those who have not studied music, and their recital here is only intended to show how large is the number of natural laws even in the simple world of music which does not exist in space and has neither length, breadth nor depth, only time. These are real laws, not made by man, not even by the musical creator, the composer. 56 UNITY IN NATURE Another and perhaps a more difficult set of rules deals with rhythm, with the intensities and durations of the soundings of notes and of pauses, a subject into which the Eastern Indians have attained a deep insight. Here one meets with what must be called a mechanical difficulty, a clashing of the laws of the musical and physical worlds. For instance it is obvious that a note cannot be sustained on any percussion instrument such as the drum and the piano, and if the melody demands that a certain note shall be sustained, musicians meet the difficulty by various means, very commonly by repeating the note over and over again. With other instruments this particular difficulty does not occur, but a more serious one presents itself on account of limitations of compass and on account of a certain set of accompanying notes called partials. Thus one is face to face with the diffi- culty that the laws of nature clash with the laws of music. No musical instrument produces pure monotonic sounds of only one set of vibrations. Musical sounds are always chords, and these chords are in the majority of instruments very complex and therefore not harmonic, while the simpler sounds such as are produced by the flute sounds of an organ are generally not of the character required by the music and have an unsatisfactory effect. The science of instrumentation consists in harmonising or at least finding a modus vivendi for the law of harmony, which is the natural law in the musical world, with the law of the over-tones, partial tones or harmonics of the musical instruments which has a physical basis. The harmonics can easily be studied with the help of a violin or cello, and are by Chladin said to extend to the fifth octave. Let the open string be tuned for instance to sound C, then if the string be pressed on to the finger board at the centre of its length it will sound the octave ; if the string be lightly touched at its centre the octave will still be sounded, but both ends of the string, instead of only one end, will vibrate. By drawing the bow across LAWS NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL 57 a suitable position of the string and then gently raising the finger from its middle position one may perhaps be able to see that this point does not vibrate, it is called a node. The string will appear to be quiet at its centre but will be vibrating strongly at either end. If now a finger" be lightly placed at a distance of one-third the string's length from the bridge, then on drawing the bow across it, the fifth of the octave of C will be heard, and on looking at the string one discovers a nodal point, at both thirds of the string's length. There are now practically three strings at work of the length of one-third of the full string. The fifth produced in this manner sounds stronger than if only the upper third of the string were vibrating, which would be the case if the finger were pressing it down on the finger board. If now one finger, lightly touching the string, be advanced along to one-quarter, one-fifth, one-sixth and smaller fractions of its length, the corresponding harmonics are heard, jumping suddenly into existence when the long portion of the string is perfectly divisible by the short length. Under ordinary conditions a violin string produces not only the funda- mental note of the full string, but also, though with diminishing intensity, all its harmonics, and if one could follow the vibrations of the string one would notice that in addition to the vibration of the whole string, its parts also vibrate, but the nodal points, being carried about by the swinging of the whole string are not seen, except perhaps when the bow is drawn across particular points. In such cases the full note will be less strongly heard than its octave or perhaps even than the fifth of the octave. Under ordinary conditions of playing fhese harmonics ought not to be obtrusive, and a good artist will draw his bow across the string at a point where it has a damping effect on them. The hammers in a pianoforte are also placed with due regard to this object. In the construction of trumpets the reverse effect is aimed at; not only are they made to give forth many 58 UNITY IN NATURE harmonics, but any single harmonic can be easily accen- tuated, so that by a slight alteration in the method of blowing and by a varied tension and shaping of the lips of the performer, he can sound or accentuate any of the available partials, and can thus play melodies without using stops. One of the charms of brass instruments, in spite of many defects, is the possibility of simultaneously sounding two harmonics and thus producing the full effect of chords. Another very wonderful instrument is the human throat, mouth, etc. With but very slight efforts, both the pitch of the voice and the number and intensity of the harmonics can be altered, whereby the various vowel sounds are produced. Most people can hear that the II or oo sound is very pure, containing perhaps only the merest trace of the octave of the fundamental note. By careful listening to the i or ee sound it is easy to hear the deep fundamental note or drone, like a deep oo, and also some very high harmonics, all the intermediate ones being absent. The methods of analysing sounds are as yet not very perfect, and although everybody can distinguish instru- ments by their sounds, and though nobody seems to have any . difficulty in detecting the slight differences in the vowel sounds of different nations and different districts, yet the exact composition of vowels and instrumental notes which constitute these differences are not well known. The summary contained in the following table must therefore be considered as being only an approxima- tion to the truth. In fact recent investigation seems to indicate that the vibrations of some sounds are of an irregular or artificial nature. LAWS NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL 59 COMPOSITION OF INSTRUMENTAL SOUNDS AND OF VOWELS. Flute Gemshorn Close diapason f f f f P f ?. & alsc ? >odd ... f high f er p* irtials if strongly blown. String Instruments Harp Piano, high notes ., medium notes ,, low notes metallic hammer Violin and 'Cello Rebeck 100 100 53 40 20 ff ff 81 100 100 100 64 f 56 9 53 97 100 mf 32 2 9 48 100 I 13 1 ii 64 PP 3 o-oi 0-25 0-52 20 stil - ... Lhig ler p artia mf Is ar e ver y weak. ... | ... I Musical box reeds Bell ff if t f alsc > squ, ires of 5, 7, 9, etc. . f f f Vowels U or oo o Swedish o ft or ah C or eh t or ee ff mf mf mf ff ? mf f mf alsc P mf f ) som ... ... f P e un f ff detei ff ff nriiM ff id ve ff ry hi gh partials. Note. In this table, ff, f, mf, p, and pp have the usual musical meaning f rom fortissimo to piano. The loudnesses of the strings are given in numbers, 100 standing for ff. A mere glance at this table suggests very forcibly why occasionally a change of instruments and vowels has to be made. In the Sol Fa system of singing, even while continuing in one key, there is practically a series of transitions. Thus, adopting the tabled values for the upper partials, it will be seen that doh consists of the bass note, its octave and its fifth, while with re, a rather impure seventh, is introduced which finds considerable relief when the mi sound follows. 60 UNITY IN NATUEE The braying of an ass, "ee ! ah ! " is a comic though natural application of instrumentation principles, which is copied in the nursery song "See-saw, Marjory daw." The song would produce a totally different effect if one were to sing only one vowel : "See-see, Meejory dee," or " Saw-saw, Mawjory daw." The fact that vowels are chords accounts for the annoyance which many people feel when a song is sung in another language than that in which it was composed. If the composer has arranged his notes so that they are suitable for the upper partials ah, e, ah and i = ah-ee as in "Jag elska dei," then if by translation the vowel sounds ah ee, o and oo are respectively substituted as in " I love you," a wrong effect is necessarily produced. These difficulties of instrumentation are mentioned here merely with reference to the effect of the interaction between physical laws, or rather of the laws of the upper partials of instruments, and the harmonic laws which are the natural laws in the musical world; but the question may well be asked whether, after all, the music which one hears and enjoys is a real world of its own r in which its own laws are strictly followed, or whether a feeling of the physical impossibility of producing pure notes has gradu- ally settled down to our being satisfied and even pleased while listening to a jumble of subdued discordant sounds, dealt with, however, in such a manner as to make them appear as if they had a right to exist in music. The question as to what real music is does not, however, affect the subject of this chapter, which was an enquiry into the nature of laws in general, and is intended to have made clear the difference, both in our world and in the world of music, between laws of nature and arbitrary ones. Those of the one set are unalterable and everlast- ing, those of the other change in accordance with human requirements. Lilliputian potentates may make and enforce laws that breakfast eggs must be opened at the larger or smaller ends, but they cannot make laws for LAWS NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL 61 water to run uphill, and even Charles V. could not make a pendulum swing a millionth of a second faster or slower than is fixed by nature. Similarly no composer will ever be able to ride rough-shod over the natural laws of music. The physical and musical worlds are therefore similar iir this respect that they have each their own unalterable laws. THE ESSENCE OF MUSIC AND OF LIFE. THE possibility lias already been hinted at, that the music which its lovers appreciate may, after all, not be the real music of which it is here assumed that it constitutes a world of its own, and this doubt, as well as the impossi- bility of denning what music is, would make it somewhat difficult to carry out an analogy between music and life, were it not that the question : "What is life?" also waits an answer, and that by putting these questions in a different form perhaps some insight into this double problem will be attained. What is the essence of music, and what is the essence of life ? There is, as yet, no very obvious reply to the second question, but as regards music, few would hesitate to say that its essence is vibrations. Yet, remembering that light, too, consists of vibrations and that light is not music, and that even rapid changes of light produce no effect which at all resembles melody, it seems desirable to modify this remark and to say that music consists of changes of vibrations of elastic mediums, and that these changes are carried out in strict conformity with a law called harmony, and also that there are larger sub-divisions of time which are called rhythm. The combination of the two sub-divisions is known as melody. Now both melody and rhythm are each only parts of music, and the idea suggests itself that music may be defined as a dualism, each member consisting of sub- divisions of time, the musical vibrations measuring from about one-thirty thousandth part of a second to about one- thirtieth of a second, whereas the musical periods of rhythm vary from fractions of seconds to fractions of hours, 62 THE ESSENCE OF MUSIC AND OF LIFE 63 the sub-divisions of symphonies being part of the rhythm of the piece. Casting around for another example of a similar sub- division of time into two interfering groups, attention is at once directed to the planets. They circulate around- the sun at definite rates. Viewed from outside, satellites would seem to oscillate or vibrate from side to side of their primaries, while these move majestically from side to side of the sun. In fact, the general harmony of the movements of stars has, even in ancient days, caused the term "Music of the Spheres" to be applied to the move- ments of planets. The periods of those planets which were known to the ancients corresponded to the musical octaves and fifths. Thus Mars, the Earth and Mercury represented the fourth, fifth and seventh octave of Saturn, while Jupiter represented the second fifth of Saturn, and Yenus the fourth octave of Jupiter. No sooner had Galileo discovered Jupiter's satellites than the same harmony was discovered amongst their periods, and now that more powerful telescopes have revealed Uranus, Neptune and about two dozen satellites of the planets, and as their periods are all fairly harmonious, as will be shown in the chapter on Matter, it is even more correct than formerly to speak of the music of the spheres. While tracing out this idea the further relation manifested itself that the periods of revolution of the satellites stand in the same relation to the periods of their primaries as do the vibrations of single notes to their usual durations. Thus notes of about the pitch of C 2 have 516 vibrations per second and are in a general way sustained for one quarter to one-third of a bar, or say for one quarter second, which gives 154 vibrations per duration of each note. C]_ with its 129 vibrations is generally sustained for one second or more, while the bass notes with vibra- tions as slow as 32 per second are sustained for con- siderable periods, as drones. In a general way, therefore, the oscillations or rather the revolutions of satellites may 64 UNITY IN NATUBE be likened unto musical vibrations, while the revolutions of their primaries round the sun correspond to periods which one feels as musical measure. In this sense, one may think of " Music of the Spheres." In view of the fact that music has no existence in space, but only in time, and that, therefore, its essence must be sought for in time alone and in its sub-divisions, one may not unreasonably draw a parallelism between the star periods and the musical period, and thus confirm the view about music being a dualism, one partner consisting of rapid vibrations or sub-divisions of time of more than thirty per second, the other partner consisting of longer sub-divisions varying from fairly large fractions of seconds to minutes and perhaps hours. In other words, the essence of music is that it is a dualism consisting of melody and rhythm. Both partners exist only in time, both are based on harmony of numbers. They differ, however, in this very important point, that whereas rhythm can lead an independent life, as in the drum beating of the Orientals in tattooes, etc., melody, without rhythm, is inconceivable. Notes or chords, however harmonious they may be, would not be music if their order and their duration were unsettled. A melody would be completely changed, it would not be the same melody, if the long notes were played short and vice versa, or if the order of the notes were changed. Surveying these two components of music, it strikes one as if rhythm were an independent and careless master who goes his own way, come what may, nor does it seem to matter to him whether he is accompanied by his partner or not. Melody has to be carried, she cannot walk alone, and yet she gives the impression of being the superior. Tied to her partner, her vagaries of mood lead him a chequered life which impresses itself on us as if a perpetual striving were maintained between the two. They seem to have divergent aims. Hhythm seems to wish to be left in peace; he would, one might think, be THE ESSENCE OF MUSIC AND OF LIFE 65 content to live an everlasting monotonous life like the moaning of the harbour bar. Melody, on the other hand, loves change, yet is never without her supporting rhythm, to whom she is tied as to a stolid partner who would fain make her lead a decorous and well regulated life. She- would gladly do without him if only she could exist alone. Occasionally, and to a limited extent, she may succeed; she may leave one musical measure for another, and yet she will be recognisable as the same musical theme, but when she attempts to live alone, when she attains to the position of pure harmony of vibrations, then she is dead as a melody, she is lifeless, a mere statue, an image and a monument of her former self. Mere harmony is more lifeless than the most monotonous rhythm, a peaceful Nirvana reigns in the place of melody as death reigns in this realm of silence. Is this the essential condition of those extraordinary harmonious but unmelodious jumbles which are so frequent in modern musical pieces? Musicians make use of the aspiration of melody to be freed from rhythm, when, to meet the wishes of their tired audiences they have to end their pieces; they then harmonise melody and rhythm, they strike a few harmo- nious chords which give the impression of finality and of rest, a rest which allows the hearers to re-transfer them- selves to their own world. If now attention be turned to the physical world, and the question be asked "What is the essence of life?" several answers suggest themselves, but the one which is at once in close harmony with the answer given about music,, is that life also is a dualism in which the partners are matter and energy, and also that, like rhythm and melody, matter, one of the partners, is sluggish and independent and capable of existing alone, whereas energy, though restless, is tied to matter, and yet, as it were, is always striving to be freed from it. It is intended in the following chapters to accept this analogy, and to deal with life from this point of view. 66 UNITY IN NATURE Matter claims first attention, and an attempt will have to be made to give some idea as to its distribution in space, both as regards quantity and diversity of quality. Un- fortunately, this cannot be done without a few calcula- tions, in which millions and billions have to be freely used, and finding that some classical notions about the building up of our own planetary system do not fit in with the views which force themselves to the front, it has appeared necessary to make suggestions about cosmic matter which seem more plausible than those invented by Kant and Laplace, who died long before any of the modern views about matter and energy had been mooted. Energy will then have to be dealt with; it will be followed step by step through its many specialised forms and finally recognised as organic life. The process cannot here be summarised, but it seems desirable, while reading through the following chapters, to be well on one's guard against a feeling that a highly specialised form of energy grows out of a more lowly one. That is not the case. Mechanical work and electric energy are convertible, the one into the other, but electrical energy has not grown out of mechanical work, as leaves grow out of a tree, or as one species is evolved out of another. In the following chap- ters the various forms of energy are merely placed one after another in a sort of natural order, in which the higher manifestations of energy combine the special characteristics of all the preceding lower ones, and add one or two new ones. The meaning of this cannot be made clear without a knowledge of what follows, but a brief list may be of some future service. Starting with the simplest form, according to general notions of energy, there are attraction, potential energy, vis viva, work, heat and light, electricity. Amongst these, energy appears merely as a striving, with perhaps a tendency to free itself from sluggish matter, or at best to be tied to as little matter as possible, a tendency which THE ESSENCE OF MUSIC AND OF LIFE 67 reappears in all energy manifestations and may generally be recognised as economy. In chemical energy a restless striving like attraction, now called affinity, is recognised, a desire on the part of energy to be liberated from matter and to pass as heat~ into the mucji lighter medium, ether. In addition, there is discovered a kind of chemical inertia or friction, which adds great stability to chemical compounds, but which, although in itself it represents merely a slight amount of energy, nevertheless it may produce enormous results, in the same way as the release of the trigger of a gun initiates the explosion of the gunpowder which follows. Chemistry also reveals another specialisation in the form of catalytic energy. This is possessed by some chemicals and consists in their acting as agents, often insignificantly small, which bring about chemical changes of great importance and magnitude. In organic energy all the previous specialisations re- appear, including catalytic energy, and a new one, which may be called cell or life energy. Like the one just mentioned, an insignificant agent brings about great chemical changes, or, as they may now be called, organic changes, but these are not changes which the surround- ings desire and which a catalytic agent merely initiates, but changes which the germ itself desires, generally its own reproduction or modification. This germ-energy appears' in the most wonderfully modified forms in all higher manifestations, and is recog- nised even in the statesman who utilises the energies of nations for the furtherance of his wishes. His, often very successful, rival is content to be a catalytic agent, sitting on the fence, watching which interests are tending towards antagonism, and then leading them into battle, or at any rate, initiating the fray. Another point may here be mentioned, and that is that energy, being blind, is easily trapped into degenerating 68 UNITY IN NATUEE into a lower form, as organic life degenerates into chemi- cal energy, as in cases when death sets in. As already mentioned, these remarks, being more of the nature of a summary, are not easily understood except after a perusal of what follows, and a start will therefore be made with the subject "Matter." MATTER. THE most natural feeling about matter is that it is ever- lasting or indestructible, but when one watches a tiny seed growing up into a large tree, though neither Heaven nor Earth contains the wood necessary for its construction, and again when this wood disappears if thrown into a fire, the intellect warns one not to be guided by natural feel- ings. This warning had been preached to such good purpose in the past, that people believed that gods at least could create things out of nothing, and in later days alchemists professed to believe that iron and lead could be changed into gold. Their mercenary labours have not been entirely wasted, for when they introduced the balance into their laboratories they created the science of chemistry, and chemistry has confirmed what man in his early ignorance merely felt to be true, that matter is indestructible. Chemists can burn diamonds in oxygen. These disappear and even the volume of the air supplied does not change, yet one should not be misled into believ- ing that the carbon has disappeared, one must weigh the things before and after combustion. Then it will appear that the oxygen has changed, has become heavier, so that in a sense the diamonds have merely been volatilised; they have not been lost and could be recovered, but only as black carbon, for crystallization is still a mystery. A change of form has taken place but no destruction of matter. If a drop of silvery mercury and some yellow sulphur be mixed together and then heated, the mass sublimes, i.e., volatilises and condenses as a hard mass. On break- ing up the product and carefully grinding it till it is an 69 70 UNITY IN NATURE impalpable powder, vermilion is produced. Yermilion is a chemical compound of sulphur and mercury, but it has none of their properties ; it is not fluid like the one nor will it melt like the other; it only sublimes when heated. Its colour differs from that of its constituents and so do all its other properties, but the weight of the vermilion is exactly equal to the weight of its consti- tuents. If vermilion and iron filings were to be mixed together and heated, fumes would escape which if con- densed and collected would be found to be mercury of exactly the original weight. The sulphur has gone to the iron and formed another substance, sulphide of iron, from which by a somewhat more complicated process, the sulphur could also be regained. Nothing has, therefore, been lost, matter cannot be annihilated. These experi- ments can be repeated, in one way or another, on all the seventy odd chemical elements, but in every case, careful weighing establishes the fact that matter can be changed but cannot be destroyed or created. One notices, as in the above case, that the chemical elements can combine to form new substances, having totally different properties, but as these changes always imply the interaction of energy, the subject will have to be dealt with later. Matter is said to consist of molecules, which are the smallest particles of chemical compounds. Molecules demand the existence of a retaining medium which scientists have called ether, and they have endowed it with most wonderful properties, to wit, it is weightless and yet material, it allows matter to pass through it without resistance and yet it is a solid. These assertions are very wonderful but are implicitly believed in by many. The question at once suggests itself what is the amount of indestructible matter in the universe? Or the less difficult one as to the amount of matter per cubic mile or kilometer? The mass of the earth weighed on its surface is 5,98T trillion tons (5,987. 10 18 ). The sun's mass is 316,000 times greater or 189 quadrillion tons (189. 10 24 ). MATTER 71 Who knows how many millions of suns there are and how can they be weighed? Some, it seems, are much heavier than our sun, others are lighter. In addition there are the non-luminous heavenly bodies. They cannot be seen nor counted bxit they are known to exist even if for no other reason than that our planets are non-luminous; so are the asteroids, so are the meteorites, and one may feel -fairly certain, for instance, that Algol and a few other stars of this type consist of one bright star with a dark companion. It is impossible without going into a few calculations to convey even the faintest idea of the enormous amount of matter in the universe and its distribution, but the subject will be dealt with on the simplest possible lines. Astronomers can weigh the masses of stars only when they are found in pairs, and of these there is a fair number in the universe, but the measurements are exceedingly delicate and, as yet, not over reliable. Those few stars about which the fullest information is available are collected in the following table, which contains the estimated masses and the parallaxes, measures which express the distances. The magnitudes of the stars are also contained in the table as well as estimates based on these, which are of interest as showing that for other stars whose masses are not known, one may, when the spectrum is ascertained, make reasonably fair guesses. The sixth column of this table, giving the ratio of light value to mass is also of interest in so far as that this ratio is approximately proportional to the products of the stellar brilliancies into the heights of their atmospheres. Too much importance must, how- ever, not be attached to any of these estimates, for the parallaxes are often unreliable to the extent of 0*02 seconds of angular measure, whereby both the masses, distances, and other values are in some cases made uncertain by several hundred per cent. UNITY IN NATUEE BINARY STARS WHOSE MASSES AND DISTANCES ARE KNOWN. Name of Star and Orbits of Companions Masses Parallaxes ' Iii 5.s Magni tudes Light ratio to Sun ! i ~A g bo " 3 3 : Spectrum type (letters) with remai-ks about Stellar atmospheres " Years . . Aurigae (Capella) 18-4 0-087 374 0-21 131 -0 7-1 (G). Like sun. 85 Pegasi 11-3 0-054 60-3 5-83 2-24 0-20 (Ma). Probably cold. Carbon present. p Aurigae - 5-0 0-067 54-3 2-07 49-6 9-9 (A). But peculiar. Much hydrogen. No helium. Say <* Canis Min (Procyon) 3-0 0-341 9-5 0-48 6-5 2-0 (F5G). More hydro- gen than on sun. Small Cornp. (0'87") - 0-63 55 12'0 Small ... - a Canis Maj (Sirius) - 1-75 0-377 8-6 -1-58 35-6 10-2 (A). Much hydrogen. No helium. Dark Comp. (7 '8") 1-75 55 Dark ... - 7 Virginis (Porrima) 1-65 0-074 ' 44-0 3-7 7-4 4-5 (F). Little hydrogen. Much calcium. Companion (5 '7") 1-65 55 55 3-6 7-3 4'5 Ditto. 70 Opiuchi - 2-94 0-162 20-1 4-07 1-05 0-36 (K). Comparatively cold. Much calcium. Small Comp. (4-5") - 55 55 9 Small ? - Centauri - 2-00 0-752 4-3 1-36 1-47 1-4 (G). Like sun. Companion (17'7") M 55 1-61 0-47 9 (G). Like sun but colder. 5 Equutei 1-00 0-071 45-7 5-4 1-67 1-75 (F). Like sun. Equal Comp. (0'4") - 0-89 55 5-4 1-67 1-75 (F). Like sun but i much calcium. t\ Cassiopiae 1-62 0-154 21-1 4-0 1-74 1-07 (F8G). More hydro- gen than on sun. Companon (11 "4") 9 55 7-5 Small 9 ' K Pegasi and a Spectro- scopic Companion - 0-48 0-106 30-7 4-27 2-06 4-3 (B8A). Probably hotter than sun. Geminomum (Castor) 0-20 0-198 16-4 2-7 2-50 9 ( F). Much hydrogen. No helium. Companion (575") - 3-7 1-00 9 Probably heavy atmosphere. Sun . ... 1-00 3 min. -26-4 1-00 1-00 - MATTER 73 As regards spectroscopic observations in general, one has to remember that they are as yet in their infancy and proper significance cannot be attached to their indications. How complicated the subject is will appear from the following. In 1901 the star Nova Persei suddenly flashed, out with a brightness denoted by a magnitude of 0'21. Most probably two stars, either faintly luminous or dark, had collided. The enormous heat which was thus generated must have melted and volatilised the combined mass, but at first it occupied a very small space and it was only after months that it had expanded millions of miles to form a faintly luminous nebula. This enormous expansion cooled the incandescent gases, and Nova Persei not only rapidly lost its brilliancy but it also pulsated. It became, in fact, a variable star. It is strange that no one has utilised these carefully measured periods for estimating the density (according to Bitter) and with it the mass of this star. In 1910 Nova Persei was still under observation, but reduced to a 10th magnitude star, visible only through the most powerful telescopes and its spectrum is now said to be of the Wolf Rayet type. One may expect that as the star shrinks, due to loss of more and more heat, it will, strange as this may sound, become brighter. Its spectrum will then perhaps change to one of the (B) Orion type, believed to be emitted by very hot surfaces. Continued cooling ultimately results in a gradual darkening and the spectrum should gradu- ally pass through the (A) Sirius type, the (F and G) Solar type, and slowly through various stages down to the dusky Aldebaran type until blackness is reached. At present apparently little more can be said about the condition of stars than that they have lined spectra and that their atmospheres contain helium, hydrogen, and other gases and the vapours of carbon, iron, and other metals, or that their spectra are continuous, indicating that certain stars may now be red hot and perhaps not surrounded by atmospheres. Much more 74 UNITY IN NATURE careful work will have to be done before this classification can be of real service. There is to begin with the possibility, nay, probability that different types of stars are composed of different materials. For instance, even in our planetary system Mercury has a mean density of 6'22, iron being about 7' 8, whereas Saturn has a density of 0'72, water being 1. Mercury may therefore consist largely of iron and other heavy metals while Saturn may consist of condensed helium, hydrogen, nitrogen, etc. Fluid hydrogen has now been found to have a density of one-eleventh that of water, while gold is 240 times as heavy as hydrogen. If Mercury and Saturn were carried far away from the Sun and heated to incandescence, the spectroscope might detect helium, hydrogen, etc., in Saturn's atmosphere, and iron, nickel, and copper, etc., in that of Mercury, but only, and this is of importance, if Mercury be made hot enough to volatilise these heavy metals, and if Saturn be not made so hot as to drive off hydrogen. Another complication arises out of the attractive effect of the very different masses of the stars. Thus theoretically, the height of the Earth's atmosphere should be about 27*5 kilometers or 17 miles, and if the Sun's temperature were the same as ours, its atmosphere would be only 1 kilometer high or frd mile. Seeing that its temperature is perhaps 10,000 C. or 35 times hotter than that of the Earth measured in the absolute scale, its atmosphere, if like ours, would be 35 kilometers or 22 miles high. If of hydrogen it would be 320 miles high. The densities of stellar atmospheres are unaffected by their temperatures but are believed to affect the widths of the spectrum lines and if so the densities may become measurable. As yet, such estimates as have been made of the diameters of the various fixed stars, based only on their distances and brightnesses and taking no account even of what is known about their spectra, must be very unreli- able, such estimates are however mentioned in the MATTER 75 following table in order to show what is possible in the universe as regards enormous congregations of matter and diversity of composition. LARGE SINGLE STARS WHOSE DISTANCES ARE KNOWN. Name of Star. i i c IS a >> II 1 Ratios of diameters to that of sun. 02 Remarks about diameters, etc. a Carina (Canopus) 0-01" 540? -086 250 (F) This diameter ex- ceeds earth's or- bit. Possibly smaller than stated ft Orionis (Rigel) o-oi 540? + 034 150 (B8A) Double star. Pro- bably smaller than stated a Cygni o-oi 540? 1-33 92 (A2F) Possibly smaller /3 Crucis o-oi 540? 1-50 87 (B1A) Possibly smaller y Cassiopiae o-oi 540? 2-25 60 (B) Possibly smaller a Yirginis (Spica) 0-015 220 1-21 39 (B2A) Possibly smaller Ursae Maj. (Alioth) - 0-016 197 1-68 30 (APec) Spectrum double. Possibly smaller a Orionis (Betelgeuse) - 0-029 112 0-31 31 (Ma) Possibly much larger (cold) a Bootis (Arcturus) 0-034 96 0-24 27 (*) f Ursae Maj. (Mizar) 0-016 197 2-09 24 (A) Double star. Pos- sibly smaller. a Scorpii (Antares) 0-027 121 1-22 22 (Ma) Double star. Pos- (A) sibly much larger /?UrsseMaj. (Merak) - 0-016 197 2-44 20 (A) Possibly smaller /3 Centauri - 0-036 90 0-86 19 (B1A) Probably smaller y Ursae Maj. (Pheed) - 0-016 197 2-54 19 (A) Possibly smaller a Leonis (Regulus) 0-031 105 1-34 18 (B8A) Probably smaller a Gruis 0-022 US 2-16 17 (B5A) Probably smaller a Eridani (Achernar) - 0047 69 0-60 17 (B5A) Probably smaller y Leonis (Algeiba) 0-020 165 2-30 16 (K) Double star a Crucis 0-049 66 1-05 13 (B1A) Probably smaller 8 Ursae Maj. (Megnez) - 0-016 197 3-44 13 (K25) Possibly smaller /5 Leonis (Denebola) 0-029 112 2-23 13 (A2F) Double star. Pos- sibly smaller 76 UNITY IN NATURE The table contains amongst other things the diameters of a few of the largest stars estimated from their bright- nesses and probable distances. The details about the far-off stars are, of course, unreliable, Canopus, for instance, may easily be twice as near and therefore only half the diameter stated or it may be very much further away and very much larger. A comparison of the spectra with those of the previous table will suggest that a material reduction in some cases to below one-tenth may be permissible. Other stars, for instance, Betelgeuse and Antares, which are comparatively cold, are perhaps much larger than estimated. There are five double stars in the above list but relative movements of the components have not yet been detected. This fact limits the masses, and to a certain extent, the diameters of these stars, making E/igel less than 14 times the Sun's diameter, Mizar and Algeiba less than 6 Sun diameters, and Denebola less than 2\ Sun diameters. With one exception this is fair agreement with the diameters as modified by remarks in the last column from a consideration of the spectra. Therefore, with some amount of confidence one may say that there are about 12 stars within measurable distance of the Sun exceeding its diameter five times and its volume and mass 125 times. Also that there are five within measurable distance which are about 20 times larger than the Sun, or about 8,000 times heavier, and that Canopus, heading the list, even if reduced to a tenth of its estimated size, is 25 times as large as the Sun and possibly even much more than 16,000 times as heavy. The contemplation of such an enormous mass may well take one's breath away, but there is no reason why these congregations of masses should not be possible amongst the millions of stars which surround us. Even in our little planetary system a great diversity is found. There are a fair number of Satellites, mostly smaller than the Moon, say 2,000 miles diameter; then there is Jupiter and the Sun who are respectively about MATTER 77 40 times and 400 times larger and respectively about 64,000 and 64,000,000 times heavier than the planetary satellites. Why should not a similar disproportion exist between our Sun and Canopus? It is desirable to give a glance at the pigmy suns, namely : those which it is believed are smaller than Jupiter. Here too, as in the last table, the diameters are estimated from the brightnesses and distances, but unfortunately no corrections are possible because being very faint, the spectra of these stars have not been photographed. The Earth's diameter is 12,742 kilometers, that of Jupiter is ten times as large, that of the Moon 3,450 kilometers. TABLE OF SMALL SINGLE STARS. Star Names. Parallaxes. Distances in Light Years. Magni- tudes. Diameters estimated from Brightnesses Kilometers Krueger 60 (Companion) A 18609 0-271 0'35 12 9 11-0 8'9 8,300 35,000 22398 (Companion) 0*292 11 9-3 35,000 Krueger 60 0'271 12 90 50,000 OA 11677 0'27 12 9-0 83,000 CZ VH 243 0'319 10 8-5 86,000 OA 17415 0'25 13 9-0 95,000 2 2398 0*292 11 8-5 98,000 22298 0-353 g 8-2 98,000 LL 21258 0*240 14 8-5 115,000 34 Grombridge 0-307 11 7-9 120,000 LL 21185 0-334 10 7-6 125,000 None of these stars is visible to the naked eye, they have been under close observation by astronomers merely because they have made themselves conspicuous through peculiarities. There is probably a very large number of stars equally faint and equally near which have not 78 UNITY IN NATURE been measured, because attention has not been specially drawn to them amongst the tens of millions of equally faint ones. Confining one's attention, therefore, to stars with known parallaxes it appears that their average distances from each other, at least in the neighbourhood of our Sun, are from nine to ten light years ; this is about one hundred billion (10 14 ) kilometers or approximately sixty billions of miles. This means that the space fringed by the few measured outer giants of about 540 light years, may be filled with about one million luminous stars, but of which a large majority, although relatively near, are too far away to be seen even with the help of the largest telescopes and of which the distances of only one hundred have been measured. In order to obtain a faint idea of the enormous amount of matter existing in the universe, the subject may be looked upon from the point of view, unfortunately rejected by Lord Kelvin, that matter extends into infinite space. If matter extends into infinity and if all stars were as bright as the Sun, then the whole sky should be as bright as the Sun. As this is not the case, there would seem to be a very large proportion of dark screening matter. Now it has been found by weighing raindrops which fall during a single shower that they are not all of one size, but that their weights stand in the relation 1, 2, 4, 8, 16. Occasionally drops occur having the weights 1, 3, 6, 12, but multiples of 5, 7, etc., do not occur. It, therefore, seems as if small particles at least combined in pairs, and one may, as a starting point, assume that this happens with cosmic dust. Imagine that two or more stars have clashed together, and have been converted into a gas which cooled on expanding and by radiation and resulted in a dust, and also that the microscopic particles of cosmic dust thus formed, have combined in pairs and these again in pairs, Then for every cosmic flake weighing, say 1 gram. MATTER 79 one would expect to find two weighing half a gram, four weighing one quarter gram, etc. The total weight of each lot would be the same, but the disc areas, the screening powers would increase from 1 for the single heavy flake, to 1'25, T59, 2, 2'5, etc., for the larger number of smaller flakes. Everybody has, of course, heard of the task mentioned in the " Arabian Nights " of someone having to place one grain of corn on the first square of a chess board, two on the next, etc., up to 64, and that the number soon grew to be so great as to demonstrate the hopelessness of carrying out the task. The total weight, taking 480 grains to the ounce ie, in fact, just about one billion tons. This is as much grain as is consumed by the people of this world in from ten to twenty years. One may, therefore, expect that the screening effect of cosmic dust, meteorites, small and large dark stars, which it is here presumed exist in space, will be enormous and may account for the sky at night being as dark as it is instead of shining like the sun. Before attempting to estimate the relative proportion of bright stars to dark matter or rather to its screening effect, the possibility of certain limiting conditions will have to be considered. There is no reason why stars should not be enormously large, and Canopus, as already mentioned, may be much more than sixteen thousand times heavier than the Sun. One might look on this star as fixing an upper limit, but it is safer to select some intervening size as a starting point and to assume that the largest stars are only ten million kilometers in diameter or seven times the Sun's diameter. As regards the small luminous stars one finds in the table of pigmies twelve which are smaller than Jupiter, and one of these is even much smaller than the Earth, and not much larger than the moon. Now the only means of making a dark star luminous is either by bringing it into collision with another one, or by plunging it into a cloud 80 UNITY IN NATURE of meteoric dust, the velocity with which it is struck producing the heat necessary for incandescence. The sun's temperature can with reasonable certainty now be set down as being above 6,000 C, or twice as high as that of the electric arc. Stars of the Orion (B) type are believed to be much hotter. One may, therefore, take 8,000 C absolute, as being an upper limit of temperature for bright stars, and 1,000 C absolute, which is the tem- perature for a red heat, as the limit below which stars are too dull to be seen. If , by collision, a star's temperature be raised to 8,000 C, then as the conditions of attraction which cause the high striking velocity must be fulfilled, the minimum diameter of the finished star can be calculated and the following values are obtained : A fluid hydrogen sphere should be 70,000 kilometers diameter. A fluid nitrogen sphere should be 5,900 kilometers diameter. A magnesium sphere should be 3,000 kilometers diame- ter. An iron sphere should be 930 kilometers diameter. A lead sphere should be 410 kilometers diameter. For comparison's sake it may here be mentioned that the Earth's diameter is 12,742 kilometers, that of the Moon 3,450 kilometers, and that of the Sun 1,383,000 kilometers. The mass of a large star as compared with its surface is larger than that of a small star compared with its surface, and therefore the latter will cool more quickly than the former in the ratio of the respective diameters. This, however, is true only for relatively small spheres. For large diameter stars the heat produced by shrinkage is relatively great if they are fluid, when it will be found that, to the luminosity period mentioned above, another portion MATTER 81 depending on the cubes of the diameters has to be added. This refinement has, however, not been introduced into the calculations. If one could feel sure that every star commenced its luminous life at an intense white heat and gradually grew dull red and then died out, the above information would be a correct basis on which to make the estimate, but it is quite evident that the collisions will not always be between two bodies of equal size. Of course, the larger spheres will be more frequently struck than small ones, but not by their equals. The heat produced is proportional to the square of the diameter of the enlarged star, but then the radiating surfaces are also proportional to the square of the diameter, and therefore the luminous periods will be proportional only to the diameters. If as assumed there are two million stars of one mass for every one million stars of double that mass, then it can easily be shown that on account of the relatively shorter lives of the small stars, these, although they have a larger combined surface than the fewer large ones, will in the aggregate give out only as much light as the latter. Assuming therefore that the largest luminous star is 10 million kilometers in diameter, or about seven times the sun's diameter, and assuming that the smallest luminous star is 1,000 kilometers diameter then the former would have to be halved 50 times in succession to reduce its mass to that of the latter, and the total light given out by all those stars which have not become dark is equal to that of 50 of the larger stars. There will, of course, be a larger number of large dark stars, meteorites, flakes, and dust, which have never been luminous and which will have a strong screening effect, hiding some stars entirely and darkening others. It is well known that if bright and dark particles are mixed together, the average brightness in terms of the brightness or whiteness of the one lot, is the ratio of the sums of their superficial areas. Distances which separate 82 UNITY IK NATURE them do not affect the shade. Lamp-black and Chinese white mixed together in a definite proportion result in a definite grey hue, which is not affected by dilution with water. This experience reduces the brightness calcula- tion to a very simple one. Assuming again that the largest star is ten million kilometers diameter, and that the smallest dust particles in the universe are no larger than one-thousandth of a millimeter, or one twenty-five thousandth of an inch, constituting in fact an impalpable powder, then the large sun would have to be halved 160 times in succession to bring it down to this small size. The sum of the surfaces of all the dark particles compared with that of the shining stars is then easily found to be 750 billions (7*5. 10 14 ), and therefore the brightness of the average star's surface, which may be taken to equal that of our sun, should be 750 billion times that of the starlit sky when there is no moon. It has been estimated that the total light of all the visible bright stars is about equal to the light of 50 million stars of the 13th magnitude. It is also known that the stellar magnitude of the sun is about minus 26*4 to 26' 8, or 39'4 to 39'8 magnitudes brighter than a thirteenth magnitude star, and as the light from the stars is spread over the whole sky while that of the sun emanates only from its disc, which measures about one half degree in diameter, it can easily be shown that the light from the sun's surface is from 260 to 650 billion times greater than that of the starlit sky. This disproportion is in such strik- ing agreement with the above estimate of 750 billions that even if it does not prove that the assumptions made are correct, it must at any rate be taken as a strong argument in its favour, which is that there is a possibility that matter is distributed throughout infinite space and that the darkness of the sky is not due to absence of bright stars but to the presence of dark matter. This is con- firmed by dark markings across some bright nebulae, lengthy clouds or arms of relative darkness or paucity of MATTER 83 stars, and about thirty starless fields, in which, even the strongest telescopes can discover no speck of light. These are probably clouds of dark matter. It was difficult for man, who from childhood has been taught to look on himself as the centre of creation, to realise that he is little better than a microbe on the surface of the earth, and few, even amongst scientific men, can wipe out the memory of the biblical sketch of the world which gives primary importance to the dry land and the waters and refers to the stars in an off hand way with the words : "He made the stars also." In comparatively recent years, but long before the most important of phy- sical laws had been discovered, the Kant-Laplace cosmo- gony was pressed on mankind, not by its authors, who did little more than mention this possibility, but by men who felt that the literal acceptance of a biblical narrative had been, and might still be, a bar to scientific progress, and in scientific circles there now exists, what might be called a popular faith, that the solar system and probably all stars have been produced as suggested by Kant and Lap- lace, by a cooling of nebulae. More recently some astronomers believe that these systems owe their existence to a contraction of clouds of meteorites which, as it seems, are believed to be small hard pellets. How, it may fairly be asked, have these pellets been created ? If at one time they were vapour which condensed into dust and which in turn conglomerated into flakes, then there would be no possible means of heating them sufficiently to cause them to stick together and form pellets. There must therefore either be an interstellar gaseous atmosphere having a very high temperature indeed, a condition which perhaps exists in the Great Nebula of Orion, which the spectroscope shows to be incandescent hydrogen, or else the cosmic flakes must have passed close to a very hot sun whose radiation heated them to melting point. These possibili- ties cannot be rejected but do not, one may feel absolutely certain, apply generally to all parts of space. It may, 84 UNITY IN NATURE therefore, be expected that, generally speaking, cosmic matter exists, not as pellets but as flakes, and that these are limited as regards size. This size may one day be determined for various elements by mathematical reason- ing, for flakes which hold together by cohesion and not by cementing fluids, must fall to pieces if they have grown so large as to strongly attract each other and collide with relatively high velocities. Generally speak- ing such flakes, because they cannot have been struck by others at high velocities may be expected to have very slow motions of their own, and are possibly congregated in relatively dense masses and remain stationary in various parts of the universe. On the other hand large stars by mutual attraction or by collisions may have acquired terrific velocities of say 30 to 100 miles per second. These few remarks about the possible contents of infinite space will already have suggested that the amount of matter out of which the innumerable stars have been built up, is so scarce that if it were converted into a gas and uniformly distributed, none of our most delicate instruments could detect it. At any rate, if we assume that the average distances between large and small luminous stars is nine to ten light years or about 100 billion (10 14 ) kilometers, then the average density, not taking into account any gases, is of the magnitude of about one milligram per 100 kilometers cubed. This density is, however, comparable with the density of meteoric matter which the earth encounters on its path, for it has been estimated that the meteorites which enter our atmosphere are spaced about 500 kilometers apart, and if on an average they weighed 120 milligrams the density of our surrounding space would be about the same as that just mentioned. In spite of these agreements it is permissible to assume that the adopted subdivision from large stars down to small particles is not as regular a one as has been here MATTER 85 assumed (merely in order to facilitate calculations), and it is more than probable that locally at least the density of matter in space is much greater than here estimated, though near large suns perhaps all matter may have become assimilated or driven away. In order, therefore, to carry the general enquiry to its logical conclusion it will now be assumed that our solar system actually once passed through such a dense meteoric cloud or rather skirted it, so that the meteoric particles will have stepped out, as it were, to meet our sun and will have circled round our system in hyperbolic paths, whose elements would be fixed by the solar velocity, say 20 kilometers per second. Some of these particles would strike the sun and planets, while others would get entangled in the system with the following result. Ko matter what the former angular position of the plane of the ecliptic and of the equatorial plane of the sun may once have been, the meteoric bombardment, if the sun were moving towards the edge of the dark cloud, would rapidly tilt both planes into harmony with the average direction of the bombardment, but the orbits of the satellites of the outer planets and also the equatorial planes of the smaller planets would hardly be affected. The large tilt of the orbits of the satellites of Uranus and Neptune, may therefore be accounted for by assuming that the ecliptic was once tilted as much as these are now, though not parallel to the present planes of these small orbits. Another effect would be, that after the planetary orbits had been tilted, the meteoric bombardment of the planets, and also certain re-actions would rapidly enlarge these orbits. Thus, Jupiter may once have occupied the posi- tion of Mercury but was forced to travel outwards, and possibly some other planets, especially if they were large or even comparable to our sun, have separated them- selves entirely from us, and may now be travelling in space in the same direction as we are, either as dark or as bright 86 UNITY IN NATURE suns accompanied by planets which formerly were mere satellites. This may perhaps explain the origin of stellar drifts, and account for the two dozen conspicuous suns which seem to be moving in the same direction as our sun. Another and very important effect of the bombardment would be the heating up of the sun. Provided that the meteoric cloud was dense enough, sufficient heat would be generated by the bombardment to volatilise a large part of the comparatively light materials of the sun and of the added matter and to create a huge incandescent atmosphere, extending possibly beyond the Asteroids. Perhaps no inner planets existed before the sun skirted this meteoric cloud, but there can be no doubt that very soon innumerable meteoric particles, which by the per- turbing influence of the outer planets got entangled in our system, would circulate round the sun as do the particles which constitute Saturn's rings, and would to this day be circulating as particles, had not the solar ones been subjected to the intense heat of the then exist- ing solar atmosphere, and melted, for flakes or hard parti- cles cannot stick together when they touch as molten drops do. Of course as Jupiter would draw off a large number of particles there would be relatively few between his orbit and that of Mars, and even if the sun's incandescent atmosphere enveloped all these particles and melted them, their collisions would be comparatively few. The attempts which these molten drops may be said io have made to come together to form one or two or three planets seem to have been nipped in the bud as soon as the sun emerged out of the meteoric cloud, for then the bombardment would cease and no further heat supply would be available for making good the enormous radia- tion of the large incandescent solar atmosphere, and that would rapidly shrink and leave a number of half-formed Asteroids in the cold. These may still occasionally col- lide, but being hard they will rebound and part company. The molten drops in the inner portion of the solar ring MATTER 87 have had a better chance of forming planets, partly because there appears to have been plenty of material available, and partly because this region remained hot for a relatively long time.* If, however, this view be correct, then one might expect that the perturbing influence of the outer planets, especi- ally of Jupiter, on the inner particles or molten drops, would be of a definite character, and that seems to have been the case. The perturbing effect of an outer planet is greatest on such inner planets or particles as have periods of revolution of 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6, 1/8, 1/12, etc., of their own, which means that whereas other particles would revolve round the sun in circular orbits, those whose periods harmonise would occasionally be forced to revolve in elliptical orbits, and they would then come in contact both with such particles as have larger and such as have smaller orbits than themselves. They would gather these up and gradually form large planets. According to Croll the eccentricity of the earth's orbit was so great, only 800,000 years ago, as to bring us half way to Yenus. Of course, if the density of the supposed solar ring were irregular, as is still the case with Saturn's rings, the natural periods mentioned above would be somewhat modified according as to whether more or less matter was found within or beyond the perturbed particles' orbits, and then too as the inner planets grew in size they would * The preceding remarks about the effects of a meteoric .bombardment are based on calculations which, although very simple in principle, are too voluminous for publication. The remarks which here follow, on the periods of revolutions of the planets, etc., are based on a paper read by me before the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society in 1910, about which the minutes of the Society record only that it was ordered to be printed and that it was withdrawn at my request. As the last remark may give a wrong impression, it is desirable here to mention that the request was made in order to oblige the President who seemed to have to contend with difficulties similar to those which subsequently arose with one of the members about Sir Thomas H. Holland's lecture as reported in the proceedings. C.E.S. 88 UNITY IN NATURE produce perturbing effects on each other. That some influence of the above sketched nature has been at work will be evident from the following table : PERIODS OF REVOLUTION OF JUPITER AND THE INNER PLANETS. Planets ... Jupiter. Vesta. Mars. Earth. Venus. Mercury. Periods ... Ratios Progressions 4322-6 d. 48 48 1277 d. 14-2 12 or 16 686-98 d. 7-6 8 365-26 d. 4-05 4 224-7 d. 2-5 2 or 3 87'97d. 0-98 1 Vesta has merely been chosen to represent one of several Asteroid planets which might, under favourable condi- tions, have been formed out of the Asteroids. Their periods should have been 12, 16 or 24 in the above table instead of 14'2. Mars should have had a period of 8, and Venus should have had a period either of 2 or 3. It is not at all improbable that our moon was at one time a sister planet to Venus, an arrangement which occurs amongst Saturn's satellites, and that the two formed a pair having a period of one-sixteenth of Jupiter's, viz., 2'5 for Venus and 3'5 for the moon. If the outer planets have been formed by a similar process, (but during very much more remote times,) they may once have had periods of revolution which harmonised amongst themselves, but this arrangement would be changed when the sun was subjected to the above men- tioned bombardment, for under its influence the larger planets, such as Jupiter, would increase the sizes of their orbits more rapidly than the smaller ones, and it is there- fore perhaps a mere coincidence, but an interesting one, that the relative periods of the outer planets should be practically the same as those of the inner planets, except that it seems as if one planet between Saturn and Uranus were missing. This will be seen from the following table : MATTER RELATIVE PERIODS OF INNER AND OUTER PLANETS. INNER PLANETS. Names Mercury. Venus. Earth. Mars. Vesta Relative Periods. 0-98 2-5 4-05 7-6 14-2 OUTER PLANETS. Names Jupiter. Saturn. Uranus. Neptune. Relative Periods. 1-00 2-5 71 13-9 It will naturally be urged that if the planets have been formed as sketched above, then their satellites should have been formed in the same way, except that, as in their cases there would be no outer satellites, the perturbations initiated by an outside influence will have become mutual. Then also if there were no incandescent atmosphere, the materials of which the satellites were built up must have been of such a nature as to remain fluid at very low temperatures : for instance, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, etc. Now an examination of the follow- ing tables shows that for the satellites the same relations exist amongst their periods as amongst those of the planets, except that the ratio 3/2 occurs rather frequently. JUPITER'S SATELLITES. Numerals ... V. I. II. III. IV. ... ... ... VI. & VII. Relative Periods... Progression.. 1-12 1 2* 4-0 4 8.02 8 16-20 16 37-8 32 M 128 256 577 512 SATURN'S SATELLITES. 1 Names. Q 1 | i I 1 1 I 9 w P o M F K i? Relative Periods... 2 2-9 2 2-9 2 2-27 Mean relative Periods... 1 1 2'0 3-91 1 5-1 68-6 Progression . . . 1 i 2 4 8 1 5 32 64 90 UNITY IN NATURE SATELLITES OF URANUS. Names Ariel Umbriel. Titania Oberon. Relative periods 2 3-3 Mean relative periods Progression . . 1 1 2-6 2 or 3 4-04 4 Another argument in favour of the above sketched view about the Solar system can be based on the fact that with the two exceptions of Jupiter's VIII and Saturn's Phoebe, which have retrogade motions and which are probably captures and not mentioned in the above tables, all satel- lites revolve round their primaries in one and the same sense; and also that, except in the case of Uranus and Neptune, for reasons already given, the satellites revolve in the same sense as the planets revolve round the sun. Those planets of which the rotations are known also rotate in the same sense. If, as suggested by Kant and Laplace, the planets and satellites had been formed by the breaking up of solar discs or rings, then the rotations ought to have been in the contrary direction to the revolutions, for the inner particles of a disc or ring move faster than the outer ones. If, however, the planets have been formed by the sweeping-up process of expanding ellipses, as explained above, then the planets ought to rotate as they do, and their satellites ought to revolve exactly as they are found to do. It has already been suggested that our outer planets existed before the inner ones, but then, if they too have been formed by the above sketched process, though in a remote region of the universe it must have contained abundance of light material like that in the great hydrogen nebula of Orion. This would account for the marked difference of densities of the materials of the outer and inner planets, which are detailed in the following table : MATTER 91 DENSITIES OF SUN AND PLANETS. OLD SOLAR SYSTEM. Names Sun Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Density 1-38 1-33 072 0'94 0-88 YOUNG SOLAR SYSTEM. Names JVIercury Venus Earth Mars Density 6-22 5-80 5-53 3'9 If it be assumed that, during our comparatively recent bombardment, the Sun received say 10 % of heavy matter of 6'0 density, then its original density will have been 0'92, bringing it quite into harmony with that of the outer planets. Jupiter may also have had a small fraction added to its density. For the sake of comparison the densities of a few light substances are here given. Fluid hydrogen 0'09, methane 0'41, solid lithium 0'59, sulphuretted hydrogen 0'86, potassium 0'87, cyanogen 0*87, sodium 0*98, water TOO, fluid nitrogen 1'03, oxygen 1*42, chlorine T50, hydrochloric acid 1'50. One will naturally wish to look back towards the region of the meteoric cloud through which the solar system may have passed, but this is not easily indicated because the present direction of our path is determined by averaging the movements of fixed stars which are travelling in many directions and their average motion is not necessarily the motion of the meteoric cloud. Then also our path is not necessarily either straight or circular. If, however, a circular path be assumed, and if it be remembered that after emerging out of the cloud the direction of the sun's motion must at first have been parallel to the ecliptic, then two regions in the sky can be fixed upon where the 92 UNITY IN NATURE meteoric cloud may have been stationed. The one is situated a little south of Orion at about 90 R.A., 16 S, and the other region is near y Persei, at about 45 R.A. and 50 N, and the centre of our orbit should be looked for in Auriga near 100 R.A., 35 N. The two dozen fairly conspicuous stars which are said to be moving in the same direction as our sun, and possibly many more but fainter ones, may once have been partners of our sun. Does it not appear as if they too had passed through the same vast cosmic cloud through which we have passed, and that they too have there increased their weights and heat and are now entering on a period in which their planets are cooling down until conditions favourable to life are created? The conclusions which can now be drawn from the various enquiries of this chapter are that the amount of Matter in the Universe is infinite, that the average quan- tity of Matter in a unit of volume is much less than that of the most perfect artificial vacuum, but that this quan- tity is in a sense measurable. There is also every proba- bility that the matter which is distributed through space varies vastly as regards quality; the spectra of molten suns and incandescent nebulae indicate this and the differences in the constitutions of our planets prove, almost without a doubt, that our solar system has passed through two regions, the one full of light matter out of which the sun and outer planets were built up and the other full of heavy matter out of which the inner planets were formed. ENEEGY. HAVING briefly reviewed some details of Matter, the sluggish partner of life's dualism, attention has to be directed to Energy, the life-partner of Matter. One's first feeling is to say that the nature of human energy is known, for having exerted oneself and expended energy there is a feeling that the work done cannot be undone without renewed exertion. If a stone be thrown high up into the air it can smash something when it falls. This generalisation has soon to be modified, for if energy be expended by walking or running in a circle there is nothing to show for the work done. For a long time, therefore, energy was looked upon as being something that could be produced and could disappear again. The first man to discover its indestructibility by pointing out that its nature is changeable, was Dr. Karl Friedrich Mohr, an apothecary who, in 1837, published a paper on the "Nature of Heat." He refers to Force, the word Energy having not yet been applied, as being capable of appearing according to circumstances either as motion, chemical affinity, cohesion, electricity, light and magnet- ism, and that from one of these forms it could be trans- formed into any of the others. This paper passed almost unheeded, but the idea of the Conservation of Energy seems to have been in the air and several men, notably Joule, a Manchester manufacturer and amateur scientist, established the fact that 772 foot pounds of energy are equal to the quantity of heat which will raise the tempera- ture of one pound of water by one degree Fah. Here was a discovery : heat and energy were found to be the same thing ! The old idea of heat being one of the chemical elements called phlogiston died hard, but seeing that the 94 UNITY IN NATURE whole framework of physical and chemical sciences rests on the truth of Mohr's statement or its modern equivalent, and would fall to pieces if disproved, one may feel assured that the discovery first made in the middle of the last century is true. Energy, like matter, is indestructible, but its nature can be changed. In a certain sense, Newton had proved this point, but only as regards the lower manifestations of energy; he showed that work, potential energy, kinetic energy, vis viva, etc., were one and the same thing. These are the forms in which energy appears in the movements of the stars. Energy cannot be seen or felt, nor has it been defined. It can be measured but never in fewer than two units. Even some of these are beyond our comprehension. Thus energy is measured in feet and pounds, or in any other multiple of distance and force. Supposing that a heavy swing is pushed with a pressure of twenty pounds, and supposing that thereby the swing is moved through a distance of four feet in the direction of the push, then one has done 20 x 4 = 80 foot pounds of work, and has imparted 80 foot pounds of energy to the swing. If the swing were to be tied up to the point to which it has been pushed one would have a form of energy called potential energy. Releasing the swing it flies back and past its lowest position with a certain velocity. In this guise one has kinetic energy, or vis viva. Whenever the swing comes to rest again in its highest position it once more represents potential energy. Thus a swinging swing, or a pendulum represents a succession of changes of energy from the potential to the kinetic and back. It is desirable here to give a word of warning as regards the mathematical expressions, multiplication and division as applied to energy. These expressions are conveniences, but they are also misleading. For instance, work is the product of force into distance, and conversely force is energy divided by distance. This is the mathematical ENERGY 95 way of saying that if a certain amount of energy, repre- sented say in the case of pile driving by a falling tup, drives it downward through a certain distance, then the force which is doing this work existed at the contact, and can be ascertained by dividing the acquired and disap- pearing vis viva of the tup by the movement of the pile. This example may appear relatively clumsy, but it is perhaps clearer than the mathematical expression used above. Even in the simple case of the tied-up swing there is no clear definition in the mathematical expression for the potential energy. It is necessary to fall back on the compound foot pounds, and it is quite impossible to say where the potential energy really is. The same diffi- culty applies to a weight which has been lifted from the ground to an elevated platform. The whole system repre- sents so many foot pounds of potential energy, for if the stone were to fall down it would reveal a definite power or energy for smashing something. Supposing, however, that the platform were surrounded by a rampart or guard, then mathematically speaking nothing is changed, the system still represents so many foot pounds of potential energy, but before this energy can develop itself, addi- tional energy will have to be applied to lift the stone over the obstructing guard and this addition will reappear in the fall. Where is the energy? In the stone? In the platform? Or in the lower level? This difficulty of expressing energy with mathematical precision will make itself felt more and more as higher forms of energy are discussed. But two conditions to which energy is tied seem to stand out clearly, the one being that it can lead no independent existence but is always chained to matter, and the other is that it is always associated with two or more material objects, even if they are only atoms or electrons, and never with only a single one. This may perhaps prove to be the key with which the mystery of so many dualisms of life, including our own inner and outer world, and even the sexual dualisms might be unlocked. 96 UNITY IN NATURE Energy has never yet been defined; it is only by its manifestations that it is known. Mathematically speak- ing, energy has to be divided by one of its manifestations and then another manifestation is revealed, but not the essence of energy. The following are some of energy's simplest manifesta- tions : energy is the product of distance into force, of volume into hydrostatic pressure or stress, of velocity squared into mass. Animals, with the help of their organic constitution, convert the chemical energy of food into mechanical energy. The rate at which this is done is called power. One horse power is 550 foot pounds, or one quarter foot ton of energy produced in one second, therefore, mathe- matically speaking, power is energy divided by time. The vis viva of a one pound bullet travelling at the rate of 2,000 feet per second is about 64,000 foot pounds, which is. equal to the work which a horse could do in about two minutes. If this bullet had been a meteorite, reaching us from an infinite distance, its velocity would have been about 30 miles per second, and its vis viva about 500 million foot pounds, which would be equal to the work which six horses could do if labouring for a week of say 50 hours. The one pound meteorite looks the same as it would do if stationary, yet as it is moving in relation to the Earth, it represents the enormous amount of energy just mentioned. Even in this simple example we see how difficult it is to grasp the nature of energy. The sun is supposed to be moving through space with a velocity approximately equal to 15 miles a second, and many fixed stars are known to be moving still faster. What an infinite amount of energy this represents ! One might be tempted to make an estimate, as was done with Matter, as to the total amount in the Universe, or its average distribution in space, but the difficulties are too great. Either all the stars would have to be placed at rest and their energy converted into heat, or all the ENERGY 9T heat they contain would have to be added to their vis viva. No data are available for doing this. In spite of these difficulties it is at least desirable to obtain some insight into the nature of energy. Consider the simple case of a man playing billiards. His arm does work on the cue, to which it imparts velocity, and therefore also vis viva or energy, the cue is energetically driven forward, and if liberated from the hand would fly away like a spear or as if possessed by an evil spirit. Suddenly the cue comes to rest, for it has struck a billiard ball, the evil spirit seems to have disappeared, but no ! it has passed into the billiard ball which now flies off like one possessed across the table and bounds from cushion to cushion. Apparently the restless spirit, energy or vis viva, has little longing to be transferred to the heavy table, and yet, it seems to wish to be liberated from the ball, from the inert mass to which it is tied. Suddenly the moving ball strikes another one at rest, and as suddenly all the energy passes from the one to the other which in its turn shoots madly about. During the short intervals of contact the vis viva is changed into potential energy, which manifests itself as compression or flattening and pressure between the two balls, but this potential energy is at once re-converted into vis viva. The reason why, if left alone, a ball comes slowly to rest, why it loses the energy imparted to it by the player, is that it is doing frictional work, is losing energy to the table while it rolls on it and while it displaces the air. This frictional work is changed into heat which dissipates and is practically, though not really, lost. In this simple example one sees that although matter, in this case the cue or the ball, can be at rest or moving, can be possessed by energy or free from it, energy does not seem able to liberate itself from matter. It acts as if it wished to be free from the particular matter to which it is for the time being attached, but in the act of escaping H 98 UNITY IN NATURE from one material object it seems to be forced to plunge into another. The behaviour of energy when a ball meets the cushion is also interesting. Here, too, the vis viva or kinetic energy is instantaneously converted into pressure and stress, which is potential energy, but it does not seem to like its new abode in the cushion, as if it disliked its massiveness, and without any hesitation the restless spirit re-enters the billiard ball which has now come to rest, and at once flies madly away with it. It comes in contact with the nap of the table cloth and imparts itself to these light objects; it also transforms itself to the light medium (air) through which it moves, and in doing so it changes itself into heat and thereby acquires the ability of moving away with the velocity of light. From the enormity of the velocity with which energy as heat moves through space, one gathers that its new medium is even lighter than air. Scientists call it ether. The idea that energy has a desire, or consists of a desire, to be free from matter is but a crude one, but it has this advantage, that it is simple. However, for convenience of dealing with more complicated natural phenomena it is perhaps better to say that energy has a strong tendency to change its manifestations towards more and more specialised forms, the complexity or incomprehensibility increasing as it were the smaller the proportion of matter to energy. HEAT ENERGY. IF a piece of lead be placed on an anvil or on a heavy stone, and belaboured well with a hammer, it will if touched feel very warm. Here human energy has been converted into kinetic energy in the hammer, to potential energy as pressure between the hammer and the lead, and lastly into heat which shows itself by raising the tempera- ture of the piece of lead. The reason why lead should be used for this experiment HEAT ENERGY 99 is that it has a low specific heat, which means that a small amount of heat will raise its temperature considerably. The same amount of heat for instance which will raise the temperature of one pound of water 1 Fah. will raise that of lead as much as 32 Fah. Heat is not the same thing as temperature. Heat is energy, temperature is heat or energy distributed in matter. Mathematicians would say divided by matter, but it is doubtless more correct to say that temperature is heat divided by some property of matter. Here a strange relation previously referred to turns up again. Energy and heat are, as proved, identical. If one divides (mathematically speak- ing) energy (in this case vis viva) by mass, or by the inertia of matter, one obtains a velocity squared, a some- thing whose meaning cannot easily be grasped. If one divides energy (in this case heat) by mass or by the heat retaining property of matter, temperature is obtained, yet temperature and the square of a velocity are surely not one and the same thing. Apparently they stand to each other in the same relation as the inertia property of matter stands to the heat retaining power of matter. This latter factor has received the name of entropy, but it is after all only a name, though one which has proved of great con- venience in mathematical discussion of heat and work. The heat which warms materials and which is tied to them has many peculiarities ; one of these is that it leaves them as soon as it finds others that have lower tempera- tures. If a pound of water be placed in contact with a pound of lead and a certain quantity of heat be imparted to these, 31 / 32 would go to the water and only 1 / 32 would go to the lead. If we could change the specific heats we should alter the ratio. This changing of specific heats is in a way done in all steam, gas and vapour engines, and is the means of producing power from the heat which was generated by the combustion of fuel, for vapours vary their specific heats according to the change in their volumes or pressures. Another property of heat is that 100 UNITY IN NATUKE it radiates into space. Radiant heat, and also light are believed to be electric waves, and identical with, but much finer than the electric waves of wireless telegraphy. That question need not be discussed here, but it is of importance to note that, ever since the theory of the con- servation of energy has been established, physicists have unconsciously accepted the view that electricity, radiant heat and light cannot move through interstellar space, which they assume to be matterless, and they have there- fore filled it with a mythical substance, by some believed to be a solid, and have called it "ether/' Recently discovered peculiarities about aberration have shaken this view considerably, and if, as seems probable, all solids and fluids are volatile at all temperatures, even at absolute zero, then there is little need for the presence of ether. Possibly at no distant date the view may find credence that interstellar space is filled with highly attenuated gases, possibly of considerable temperatures, at any rate, the vast region of the great nebula in Orion which it would take millions of years for our sun to traverse even at the rate of 15 miles per second must be incandescent gas. Then too some recent experiences according to which a perfect vacuum is a good non -conveyer of heat and of electricity seem to imply that radiant heat if not light also, requires a material medium for its trans- mission. ELECTRIC ENERGY. ELECTRICITY too is a manifestation of energy, but so highly specialised, particularly in its magnetic manifesta- tions, that none of our senses seem capable of perceiving it. Thus if a person step on a sheet of glass, which is a good non-conductor, he may safely allow himself to be charged with as much electricity as would produce a spark strong enough to break through the glass plate and yet he would feel nothing. He may also lay his hands ELECTEIC ENEEGY 101 on an electro-magnet which is exerting- ah 'attraction could pull nails out of wood, and again he feels absolutely , nothing. In both cases he occupie regions in wLucli there are powerful accumulations of energy, but he does not feel or see them. Strange to say human beings do not even feel electric currents that may be passing through them, but they do feel, and may die of, changes of inten- sity. Why is this insensibility? Perhaps we ought to have a sixth sense, perhaps it is as well that there are only five, for human beings might suffer with each magnetic storm and might get out of order as much as a watch does when it is placed near a dynamo. At any rate even a sixth sense would not help towards our understanding what electricity is, for in spite of eyes the nature of light remains a mystery, nor do our hands tell us what force is. Some people profess to feel the approach of thunderstorms and playing with Tesla discharges makes one abnormally sleepy and Eontgen rays sterilise, but these are vague effects not real perceptions as by a sixth sense. However, a few things are known about electricity. There are two kinds, one positive, one negative, and these attract each other. If regions of positive and negative electricity are connected by means of a wire, metal being a good conductor, these two electricities flow together, and this flowing is called an electric current. This current warms the wire and if the wire be coiled, magnetic effects are produced. If the wire be cut and the ends immersed in a fluid electro-chemical effects are the result. If the wire be laid alongside another wire, induced elec- tric currents are produced. A point of great importance is that mathematicians can accurately estimate all these manifestations of electric energy, and they have thus placed themselves in a position not only of being able to express this energy by numerous complex terms, but the facility thus afforded for looking at electricity from many points of view has made it possible to discover new and most non-natural applications 102 UNITY IN NATUKE for electricity such as telegraphy, telephony, power con- version, wireless telegraphy, electro-plating, etc. At this point it .may be as well to glance at the consti- tuents as one might call them of indestructible energy. ENERGY or WORK is the product of force into distance. WORK is also the product of hydrostatic pressure into volume, and it is (horse) power or electric Watts multiplied by time. POTENTIAL or STATIC ENERGY is expressed in the same terms. Yis-VivA or KINETIC ENERGY is the product of mass or of the inertia of matter into the square of velocity. HEAT is the product of some imaginary property of matter called entropy into temperature. RADIANT HEAT is evidently the product of velocity into something unnamed. ELECTRIC ENERGY is many inconceivable things, for instance, Ohms, Time and the square of Amperes, also Volts squared, and Time divided by Ohms, etc. Its various factors have been named Yolts, Ohms, Amperes, Joules, Watts, Coulombs, Farads, etc. These things are all as real as are physical force or as temperature which can both be felt by our senses, but because we have no electrical sense these somethings can honestly be called incomprehensibles, and one naturally asks will it ever be possible for human beings to grasp their essence. CHEMICAL ENERGY. THE difficulty of understanding what scientists mean when they adopt such simple expedients as multiplication and division of things or conditions of which they cannot say what they are, is increased a hundredfold when the sums of addition, which are represented by a string of chemical symbols, are contemplated. Here energy is not tied to matter in general, but to particular forms of matter, to the chemical elements and to their compounds. One CHEMICAL ENERGY 103 cannot, therefore, talk of chemical energy as one talks of electric energy, because the name of the chemical has to be added, for instance, the chemical energy of chlorine or of oxygen. What is still more confusing is that these energies depend not on the single elements but on those which are reacting on each other. Thus, the chlorine- hydrogen energy is totally different from the chlorine nitrogen energy, in the one case there is great affinity, in the other there is strong antipathy. In all there are about 70 known elements, and thus with the possibility of com- bining these in pairs, one is brought face to face not with one further manifestation of energy, but with seventy times seventy, and also with the innumerable manifesta- tions of energy compounds of these compounds. All manifestations of energy are, what is commonly called, forces of nature, and except the physical ones : force, gravity, attraction, heat, potential, etc., the rest are name- less, and yet, the chemical affinity of one element for another is as distinct a force of nature as is the mutual attraction of positive and negative electricity, as is gravity, or the attraction of matter and matter, but it is more highly specialised. Chemical affinity, of the elements for each other, was at one time looked upon as of great importance ; not only were the elements said to have longings for each other, but their combinations also thirsted for other combina- tions, more particularly the acids for the bases. However, during the recent past the mathematical part of chemistry has grown to be a sort of play with symbols, one atom replacing another apparently at the will of the chemist or demonstrator, whereas the fact that one atom will only make way for another if it cannot hold on to its home is taken for granted, and to a certain extent overlooked. More recently, the old idea has again grown in importance because of the researches into the question of heats of combination. These, like the electric potentials of ele- ments, stand in some fairly close relation to chemical 104 UNITY IN NATUEE affinities. Thus, bromide has a strong affinity for potas- sium, and if these two elements are brought together, heat is generated, and the black bromide fluid combines with the silvery potassium to form bromide of potassium, a transparent salt. The heat evolved is called a heat of combination, and for equivalent weights is in this case equal to 190,620 calories. Had potassium and iodine been combined, less heat, viz., 160,260 calories would have been evolved, but the difference, amounting to 30,360 calories, could be evolved if bromine were to be poured on the iodide of potassium, for bromide has a greater affinity for potassium than iodine, and drives it out. Simi- larly chlorine's heat of combination with potassium and its affinity for that metal is greater than that of iodine, which would be liberated and heat evolved if chlorine were brought in contact with the iodide of potassium salts. There are also negative heats of combination. For instance, chlorine and nitrogen can be chemically united by a roundabout method, but they separate as soon as a trace of any substance having only a weak affinity for chlorine is brought near this compound, then the dissocia- tion is so sudden and so violent that this compound ranks as one of the most unreliable and terrible explosives known. Its discoverer was damaged and many subse- quent experimenters killed by it. This substance is of the nature of fulminate of mercury and of silver, sub- stances which separate into their constituents with explo- sive rapidity when struck or rubbed. A somewhat similar phenomenon is noticed with silver halogens ; the combina- tions are so unstable that on exposure to light the two elements are not exactly liberated but their bonds are loosened, so much so that certain re-agents called de- velopers, which would not otherwise affect them, will now produce changes which, by photographers, are called developments. If a lead ball be dropped from a height of 772 feet on to a solid foundation it would be found to be CHEMICAL ENERGY 105 flattened, and, as already mentioned, it would have grown perceptibly hotter to the touch, viz., 32 Fah. If dropped from double the height the increased temperature would be twice as much, viz., 64 Fah. Then seeing that the amount of heat increases with the height of the fall one would be justified in looking on the heat evolved as being a measure of gravity of attraction of the bullet by the earth. Suppose further that the lead ball were lying on a shelf behind a wall and that before it can fall down 772 feet it may have to be lifted say 8 feet over the wall, then of course, the work done due to the lift of 8 feet is not lost, for the total fall is now 780 feet, and the rise of the temperature of the bullet is now 1 per cent, more than before, but 1 per cent, had to be applied during the lift before the fall could take place. Most chemical processes are similar in nature to the one described. There is a chemical attraction between chemi- cal substances and there is a sort of trigger action required, a slight expenditure of energy being necessary before the reaction takes place. Take the following well known simple case. Mix together seven parts of fine iron filings and four parts of sulphur powder. The two ele- ments have a strong affinity for each other, but from a chemical point of view they are as yet far apart, a wall separates them. If now heat be applied until a dull red temperature is attained, the whole mass will suddenly brighten up, and combination takes place. The iron has disappeared, at least a magnet does not attract the mass, nor is a trace of sulphur to be found ; a new substance has heen produced called sulphide of iron, well known even to schoolboys, for when moistened with weak acids it gives off noxious vapours. A more complicated, but also more impressive example of this trigger action is gunpowder. This substance is a mixture of charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur, chemical substances which have great affinities for each other, but iheir attractions cannot manifest themselves as long as the 106 UNITY IN NATURE grains only lie side by side; they have to be brought into chemical contact, whatever that may be, and this is effected by applying a little heat at one point only, just enough to ignite the sulphur. This starts the reaction, and the pent up energy manifests itself with alarming rapidity, burst- ing rocks asunder or hurling projectiles with enormous rapidity. Thousands of similar reactions could be cited, in fact most chemical reactions require the application of heat. This trigger action is not, however, quite as simple as might appear. There are numerous compounds whose elements dissociate when heated and re-combine while cooling, but if mixed together in the cold they do not combine. Apparently an excess of heat converts affinity into antipathy, and it would also seem as if excessive affinity raised barriers against itself, and that combination only takes place when the affinity is somewhat reduced by heating. Recently, a whole series of so called inert elements, all of them gases, have been discovered ; helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, etc. With these elements it seems as if the obstructing barrier were so high, that the combining temperature is above the dissociating temperature. A wall or obstruction of some sort seems also to surround a few chemical compounds whose elements would other- wise separate. Thus chloride of nitrogen which can be produced by a roundabout chemical process is held together by some binding power, but the merest touch with the smallest organic particle severs the tie and the two elements separate with the most violent explosion. Not only heat but other forms of energy can overcome the reluctance of chemical elements to combine or to separate. Pressure seems to be necessary for the solution by water both of silica, which is a stone, and of carbonic acid, which is a gas. A flame is very much affected' by pressure. Pressure will alloy metals and it causes fulminate of mercury, dynamite and gun-cotton to explode. CHEMICAL ENEEGT 107 Hydrogen under pressure reduces many metals from their salts. Light produces similar effects. Thus hydrogen and chlorine may be mixed in the dark without combining, but they form hydrochloric acid if exposed to sunlight. Chloride of silver may be heated till it melts, but sunlight produces a change and blackens it (photography). Electricity, too can be made to split up almost any compound, but in this case the electric energy does the whole work of separation and in doing so disappears until recombination takes place. Chemical energy is specialised in yet another direction which in recent years has been the cause of very careful and extensive enquiries. It has been discovered that chemicals help each other. This is called catalytic action. The catalytic agent is a broker who assists at combinations and separations, he is not only the marriage broker, but sometimes also the divorce judge. He finds two chemicals in company yet unable to combine, he helps them. In other cases, elements which have been forced together against their will, have to wait for the intermediary before they can separate. Catalytic action is a highly special- ised manifestation of energy, for generally the merest trace of the matter which embodies this form of energy is sufficient to bring about stupendous changes. Thus a speck of dust starts the separation of nitrogen chloride. Hydrogen and oxygen may be mixed together in the presence of a wire heated white hot by electricity but they will not combine. Add a trace of a catalytic agent, perhaps moisture, though this is not yet established, and combination with explosive rapidity takes place, even if the wire be only red hot. Similarly, phosphorus and oxygen, which combine almost at any temperature if a trace of moisture (the catalytic agent) be present, will not unite even at a white heat if quite pure. The first catalytic agent known to chemists was platinum, more particularly platinum sponge. This substance seems to act in a mechanical way but how the 108 UNITY IN NATUEE others act is not yet known. It has the power of absorb- ing gases, amongst others, it absorbs both oxygen and hydrogen, and when these two gases find themselves in juxtaposition in platinum sponge they combine without application of external heat. This principle was made use of by Dobereiner in his well-known igniter before matches had been invented, and is the principle made use of in modern toy gas lighters, which consist of beads of platinum sponge on wire. On a large scale platinum is now used as a catalytic agent for the production of sulphuric acid, and is therefore replacing another catalytic agent, nitrous acid. For many decades sulphuric acid was made by mixing the fumes of burning sulphur with a certain proportion of moist air and adding a trace of nitrous acid, which was the catalytic agent. It had the power of absorbing oxygen from the air and handing it to the sulphurous acid, converting it into sulphuric acid, the nitrous acid remaining unchanged. All chemical substances capable of acting as intermedi- aries are called catalytic agents, and are evidently so constituted that their specialised energy produces the above described catalytic reactions, and one may therefore now add catalytic energies to the already overgrown list of manifestations of energy, or forces of nature. It is interesting to note that catalytic energy is the counterpart of trigger arrangements in mechanics, both exerting or utilising an amount of energy which is very small compared with the energy which is liberated by their meddlesome activity. Catalytic energy is therefore a move in the direction towards which energy seems always to tend, viz., to reduce the amount of matter to which it is tied, to produce a great effect with a minimum amount of sluggish matter, to effect economy. The specialised energy existing in or associated with any chemical element or any chemical compound, has been looked upon as a distinct force of nature, as distinct as potential energy, vis viva or heat, but it has already CHEMICAL ENERGY 109 been shown that there are distinct types of these forces of nature. Thus all elements have affinities for each other, they have electric influences on each other which may be positive or negative, they have varying heat producing power, etc. But the great similarity of all the manifesta- tions of chemical energy, the unity of the chemical system, cannot be grasped without a knowledge of the Atomic theory, invented about a hundred years ago by John Dalton, a Manchester schoolmaster and amateur scientist. He showed, what all the chemical professors of the day had overlooked, that when chemical elements combine, they do so in definitely determined ratios. The idea is such a natural one that it is surprising that the eminent analysts who then existed did not hit on it, and that they even opposed the new theory. Perhaps this was but natural, for the orthodox method of reporting the results of analyses was to give the constituents in percentages of the whole, whereas Dalton gave it in terms of the indivi- dual elements. Thus, if a few elements, oxygen, sulphur, copper, lead, are combined, certain chemical compounds result whose composition is given in the following table in the old form and also in terms of one element only. Old Method. . f Sulphur 50% Sulphurous acid { ~ I Oxvsren Oxygen n i i -j f Sulphur Sulphuric acid { ~ I Oxygen Copper oxide { Oxygen Copper sulphide { Litharge Puce coloured oxide Galena c Lead \ Oxygen f Lead i Oxygen f Lead * Sulphur 50% 40% 60% 80% 20% 667 33-3 92-8 7*2 86-6 13-4 86-6 13-4 Ratios. 1 1 } 1 } or{ 2/3 1 4 2 1 } or{ 1 1/4 2 1 } or{ 1 1/2 13 1 } or{ 1 1/13 I 2 } or | 1 2/13 61 } or / 1 1 ' < 2/13 110 UNITY IN NATUEE Tlie first column of percentages is very confusing, but an examination of the second and third columns of ratios reveal even with the help of these few examples that the elements have certain definite combining ratios. Thus,, fixing on oxygen as one, it is clear that wherever it is replaced by sulphur this element has to be provided in double the quantity. One also sees that the respective combining weights of copper and of lead are four times and thirteen times greater than those of oxygen. Water had been analysed in John Dalton's time, hydrogen had already been prepared, and as it combines with 8 parts of oxygen to form water, he fixed on hydrogen as the unit so as to have no fractions, then oxygen would be 8, sulphur 16, etc. Later it was found that the densities of gases are proportional to their atomic weights, since which date the atomic weight of oxygen has been raised to 16, but then instead of assuming as Dalton did that water is a simple compound of hydrogen H, and oxygen 0, which used to be written H 0, the modern notation is H 2 0, which means that two atoms of hydrogen, each weighing one, combine with one atom of oxygen weighing 16. In addition to the discovery about the specific weight of gases, it was found that the specific heats of the elements varied inversely as the atomic weights, and this helped to fix the atomic weights of most of the metals which could not be volatilised. Gradually a plausible system of atomic weights was built up. It was then found that certain elements having nearly the same atomic weights had almost exactly opposite characteristics, and other elements whose atomic weights differed considerably seemed to be nearly related. Mendeleeff hit on the happy idea of grouping the elements and thereby discovered his periodic law, which gave an additional means of fixing some as yet doubtful elements. The subject of Chemical Energy would be very incom- plete without a word about crystallisation. This, too, is ORGANIC ENERGY 111 a manifestation of energy, a combination of a multitude of forces of nature about which little is known. There are hundreds of systems of crystals and their growths are clearly part and parcel of chemical energy, but they are also influenced by temperature and pressure. Possible crystallisation represents the pinnacle of chemical energy, every force of nature of which the compound could avail itself has been drawn upon to build up the crystal, but the result is stagnation, death. Enormous and most compli- cated energy may be hidden away in crystals but it manifests itself only as something regular, as something beautiful, the very essence of energy, the restless activity, its striving for liberty is gone. Energy seems here to have overshot its mark, it can tread no further along the chemical path. Crystallisation does not lead to the next highest manifestations of energy, to organic energy. To reach that domain energy has as it were to retrace its steps to the complicated, confusing, and often unstable compounds which are summarised by the expression " Organic chemistry," from that department, with no other guide than its own restless striving to specialise into something higher, energy has manifested itself in a new and wonderful form as organic energy called cell energy. ORGANIC OR CELL ENERGY. On reviewing these brief explanations about matter and energy one finds the original propositions fairly well established, that both are indestructible, that matter can exist alone but energy cannot escape from matter. It manifests itself as a tendency to escape but its efforts merely end in its modifying or specialising itself in such a way that it can perhaps effect greater things than before, while tied to less matter. Thus one pound of matter lifted to a height of 772 feet, represents 772 foot pounds of potential energy. This energy converted into heat will warm one pound of water exactly one degree, 112 UNITY IN NATURE but as water can be heated through 180 before it boils one sees that in the form of heat a very much larger amount of energy can be stowed away in one pound of matter than by lifting it to the top of the highest moun- tain. If more heat is added, say 1,000 calories or 772,000 foot pounds, the water is converted into steam, and in this gaseous substance more energy is held than in the fluid. Now if one goes a step further and enters the wonderful domain of Chemistry and splits up water into its two constituents, hydrogen and oxygen, then this split up condition represents a sort of potential chemical energy of about 9,000 calories of say seven million foot pounds of energy. It is thus seen that this progressive specialisation is steadily tending towards a condition in which energy is tied to less and less matter. It has also been pointed out that when energy has attained the high point of specialisation called catalytic activity, it manifests itself by utilising the affinities or antipathies of less specialised forms of energy. It assists them in attaining their objects, not its own for it does not change, and it may, therefore, be compared to a marriage broker, or to a leader of nations who fully grasps the longings of his people . and directs their activity. Alexander is remembered as the founder of an empire, but he was at first the embodiment of the Greek national thirst for revenge on the Persians. When Alexander wanted to push on to India his people hung back and his expedition was little better than a failure. Thus in his wars with the Persians he was merely a catalytic agent. Quite different is the case of Caesar, or rather of the Romans. They interfered in the activity of others and forced them to carry out the Roman principle which was relative peace and internal free trade. This interference has its counterpart in organic cell life. The cell grasps the surrounding minerals, fluids, and gases, utilises the heat energy of the sun and produces organic matter endowed with the same highly specialised energy as itself. ORGANIC ENERGY 113 The structure of a cell is generally believed to be a fairly simple one, but as there are hundreds of thousands of different types of organisms on this earth, and as there are many different cells in each type, and as the cells of one type will not thrive if transplanted to another type, _ there must evidently be millions of differently constituted cells. Besides, the functions of cells in different parts of the same organisms are different. Then also it must be remembered that the nature of the activity of the organic cell is so highly specialised that chemists with their thousands of complicated appliances and manipulations have not been able to effect what organic cells do with ease, viz., produce cellulose, starch, sugar, innumerable organic acids, innumerable poisonous and beneficent alkaloids, oils, fats, colours, and scents by the hundreds. Organic cells also build up out of silica, one of the hardest substances, the most minute and complicated frame of diatomacea and radiolaria. Chemists are proud of being able to extract colours, etc., from coal, but it was the organic cell of the geological past which built up the coal measures. This complexity of cell functions points with irresistible logic to a complexity of structure of the organic cell, but a complexity which the best microscopes have not and never can reveal. The dawn of life is an unsolved mystery but the guess may be hazarded that the first organic substance must have been structureless jellies, and when structure first made its appearance it must have been coarse and only gradually did it grow finer until it dwindled down to less than microscopic dimensions. The first glimpses of life on this earth are amongst the geological records of the stratified rocks. Apparently, as will be shown later, one half of the present thickness of the earth's crust had been built up before fossils were deposited, but that does not imply that there were no organisms before that date, on the contrary the presence of enormous layers of graphite in the primitive rocks of 114 UNITY IN NATURE Canada and the fact that well defined fossils suddenly made their appearance in large numbers in the Cambrian strata is as good as a proof that the cell had been in full activity for a long time but only perhaps in plants, and not associated with frames, shells or bones. If at that time the cell was nearly structureless there cannot be any hope of ever tracing its early history. It is of course possible that life may again be produced spontaneously, but if the experiment is to be on the lines of the hoary past, beginnings will have to be amongst the grit and sedi- ments obtained from primitive rocks placed under suitable conditions of heat, moisture and saltness, in an atmos- phere which as yet contained probably no oxygen. Rapid development is not to be expected, and even if one could watch the progress of creation of life for thousands of years (millions were possibly required before cell life had real stability) it does not follow that the result would be an organic cell as known to us, most likely something totally different would appear. Seeing that nothing is known about the early history of the cell, and probably never will be, there can be no harm in indulging in a little speculation as to its develop- ment, more particularly as to how the two great organic divisions, plants and animals, separated from each other. There can at any rate be little doubt about a relationship. Both sets are built up of cells, both grow, and their methods of increase are as similar as can be. In both kingdoms there is sexual and asexual reproduction, then, too, the seed of the flower and the ova of the animal are nothing more nor less than very large cells, but they differ from these in so far that they cannot develop but die unless they are made complete by the introduction and absorption of the male pollen or spermatozoon. The feature which chiefly distinguishes animals from plants is that the former can, while the latter cannot, move about at will. Plants as a rule are cell producers, thev combine the fluids and minerals of the earth ORGANIC ENERGY 115 with the air and utilise the energy of the sun's radiant light to convert them into cells or organic juices, and at the same time they liberate the oxygen which was chemi- cally combined with carbon as carbonic acid. Few if any animals show the least power or capability of pro- ducing cells from their mineral surroundings. Animals feed on cells, and consequently are cell destroyers and carbonic acid producers. They do not utilise the energy of the sun's light or heat. Their energy is derived from the destruction of organic cells. Roughly speaking, plants are energy consumers and cell producers, animals are cell consumers and energy producers. That the one should be fixed to the ground and the other, which is capable of producing specialised energy, should be free to move seems but natural. On looking closer into the life history of a plant, it is found that the above remarks are not strictly true. The majority of plant cells are certainly energy consumers and cell producers, but there are in the same plant many types of cells whose function it is to modify cells, con- verting them into wood, bark, or leaves, and the function of the cells in flowers seems to be to produce highly specialised reproducing cells. Here cells are consumed in large quantities, carbonic acid gas is given off, as in animals, and the already specialised energy thus locally gained is converted into a still more highly specialised form having reproductive power. It seems marvellous that all the characteristics of a tree should be stowed away in one of its small seeds, but it is really a thousand- fold more wonderful that the microscopic pollen should be endowed with all these characteristics. Here then, one has a most highly specialised form of energy tied to a mere speck of matter and yet capable, as may be seen in our coal fields and in our atmosphere, of splitting up billions of tons of carbonic acid into coal and into the oxygen of the air, and thereby binding to the earth an infinite amount of the sun's heat energy. 116 UNITY IN NATURE It is interesting to note that plants are duals, consisting of cell producers and cell consumers and modifiers. Let it for a moment be assumed that the past organisms, the first combinations of cells, consisted only of cell producers. As long as there was plenty of mineral matter, moisture, and carbonic acid, and above all plenty of sunlight, cell producers would be in full activity and in full vigour. At night and in submerged dark regions where no external energy was available their activity would necessarily cease and their vitality decrease. The more hardy ones might adapt themselves to their new surroundings, and utilise the large amount of available cell matter for food. The vigorous cells would be likely to absorb the weaker ones ; they would grow in size and then split up as is their nature, and as they had always been accustomed to do. The process being carried out in the dark and being accompanied by a partial destruction of cells and libera- tion of carbonic acid and the production of energy, it is highly probable that the newly formed cells would show a tendency, more particularly those of future generations,, to prefer reproduction by means of destruction of neigh- bouring cells. There would thus be side by side two sets of cells, the cell producers and the cell consumers. The latter, how- ever, would also be cell producers or rather cell modifiers,, but only at the expense of other cells. Food cells would be absorbed until the increasing bulk of the consumers would result in a splitting up and a breaking away; a primitive birth. Here then is the first sign of sexual reproduction. The male pollen or spermatozoon is even now absorbed as if it were mere food by the female seed or ovum, which then separates from the parent and the product is a new individual. In its primitive form sexual reproduction may therefore be related to feeding. In both cases cells are consumed whereby a specialised energy is created which liberates energy or effects growth in one case and results in births in the other. OEGANIC ENERGY 117 Let it now be assumed that after a very long period in the world's history a marked differentiation between cell producers and cell consumers had taken place, both groups having the double power of splitting up and separating, and of absorbing or simply adhering to each other. Then one might conceive organisms to have come into existence consisting both of groups of cell producers and of cell consumers. In one set of organisms the cell producers would be the predominating partner, while in the other cell consumers would occupy that position. In the former set the consumers would feed on their own cell producers, and with the assistance of the liberated energy might become so highly specialised that the function of repro- duction would mainly devolve on them. Such organisms are called plants. Their roots and leaves convert the chemicals of the soil and of the air into cells. Of these some are consumed in the flowers and seeds and their stored-up energy is converted into highly specialised forms associated with the pollen and the seed. That set of organisms in which the cell consumers predominated would have to rely for cell food on other organisms, which would have to be searched for, and their cells would be consumed to supply both the matter for the necessarily highly specialised nerve energy required for locomotion, as well as for that energy which effects reproduction. This consideration may raise a doubt as to what consti- tutes the real individual, the male and female or the sper- matozoon and the ovum, the fungus and its pollen. Cer- tainly the mushroom life of these plants when compared with the long and wonderfully complicated underground life of their pollen does not lead to the conclusion so readily accepted by man that he and not the spermatozoon repre- sents the object and essence of life. And yet if economy as regards matter is one of the tendencies of energy, then a single spermatozoon whose dimensions are measured in hundredths of a millimeter instead of in meters, which contains or at least conveys all the outward form, the 118 UNITY IN NATUKE inner constitution, the main characteristics and even trifling habits from father to son, must be considered infinitely superior to the bulky man. This brief speculation about the lines along which cell energy developed towards the creation of plants and animals, and on the origin of feeding and reproducing functions, although it may not be correct, gives a slight insight into the nature of cell life and helps towards an understanding as to what is meant by saying that cell energy like chemical and physical energy is a manifesta- tion of indestructible energy. But as cell energy is life, life is also a manifestation of energy. In previous remarks about energy it has been shown, not only that one does not know what energy is but also that it cannot be located. It is associated with material objects but even in such a simple case as the combustion of hydrogen in oxygen it is not correct to say that the energy which appears as heat was located either in the oxygen or in the hydrogen. When dealing with elec- tricity the amount of energy could, it is true, be measured, but only in meaningless units like Yolts, Ohms, etc., and now that a further step has been taken cell energy or life has been recognised as being energy it seems impossible to locate it, to understand the factors of which it is com- posed, or to measure them. No wonder that life is a mystery, and no wonder, too, that those who wish to explain it should reveal their inability by declaring life to be something still more incomprehensible than it is but about which further enquiries ought not to be made. Some light may one day be thrown on this difficult subject, for even electricity, though known to the ancients was an utter mystery for several hundreds of years up to the days of Yolta and Galileo, and some discovery may suddenly help towards an understanding or at least defi- nition, firstly of the several forms of chemical energy and then, perhaps, of life, but nothing would be gained in the present state of our knowledge by describing even in the ORGANIC ENERGY 119 briefest form, the infinity of vegetable and animal struc- tures and functions. It should not, however, be over- looked that each single cell is as much a force of nature as any form of chemical or physical energy, and that therefore in the organic world the numbers of manifesta- tions of energy are infinitely numerous. Fortunately, large numbers of cells are almost as like each other as are the atoms of a single element, and even combinations of groups of cells as they are found in individual plants and animals are arranged after one pattern and one is, there- fore, perfectly justified in looking on each organic individual as being as much a force of nature as gravity, heat, electricity, etc. These act along simple but clearly defined lines, individuals also act along lines which are equally clearly definable but which are not expressible on account of the high complication and specialisation of this class of forces of nature and the primitiveness of even our highest mathematics. Groupings of cells may thus be considered as being high forms of specialised energy, at any rate the specialised energy which is called an individual is the sum total of all his cells. The life of an individual is the life of all his cells and of all their combinations ; they act and react on each other and they nearly neutralise each other, for the enormous energy which is produced by them rarely shows itself. Each cell contributes a share of its energy to the building up of the general system of the body. In the days of plenty there are innumerable excesses of energy which sum themselves together and appear to the outer world as individual life, as character. The principle of grouping, not of cells but of indi- viduals, and letting them represent forces of nature will be still better understood by glancing at one of its highest forms of development as exemplified in the case of bees, ants, etc., and perhaps even in nations. Not only do the individuals consist of groups of diverse cells, but each nation is a group of individuals, everyone bent on finding 120 UNITY IN NATURE food, on reproduction, and all striving with each other. Slight residual traces of energy, hardly as much as a thought, may join themselves together and constitute the collective instincts, public opinion, or national policy. Thus although it is permissible to treat each cell as representing a force of nature, this can also be done with a combination of cells, with the individual and also with the tribe or the state. This could not have been done with the chemical forces, for each one is too distinct, and to speak of the physical forces, gravity, heat, electricity, as a whole is merely a convenience ; there is no practical similarity between them, but there is almost perfect identity between one living cell and its neighbour, and therefore a congre- gation is practically a unit. In this search after the manifold manifestations of energy, one gradually comes to recognise it, not only as cell life, as individual life, but also as the life of the species, and the life of the species is evolution. However, before dealing with that subject, let us enquire into the value of the information which can be obtained on this grand subject from geological records and other sources. GEOLOGICAL EECOEDS. THE idea that one species has been evolved out of another is doubtless an old one, but not until Darwin, at a com- paratively recent date, indicated a probable process of evolution and pointed to fossilised remains of animals and plants as being one proof of the correctness of that view, the other being embryology, did it attain any scientific importance. The generation has not yet passed away which has heard its elders scoff at the idea that species should have been evolved and not created separ- ately, while to-day, carried away by their enthusiasm for the new theory, some recent naturalists assert that all life has been evolved from a single germ, the meagreness of the geological proofs being no bar to their flights of imagination. Nevertheless all naturalists agree that the time limit fixed by physicists is too short to account for the overwhelming amount of energy expended or directed by evolution in the creation of species. Physicists start- ing from a few simple assumptions, assert that the time of formation of the stratified rocks cannot have exceeded certain comparatively short limits, whereas naturalists, unable to show how long it would take one species to evolve out of another, content themselves with fighting a rearguard action, and merely express the belief that phy- sicists have under-estimated the period of habitability of the earth. The discovery of radium in the earth and its heat-producing power has again thrown the whole subject into the melting pot. Lord Kelvin's estimate of the age of the earth, though he did not explicitly state this, is based on the assumption that the rate at which the earth is cooling is proportional 121 122 UNITY IN NATUEE to its absolute temperature, but he made a very material modification in his premises due, no doubt, to the disin- clination to admit that the earth's central temperature would have to be about half a million degrees F., which this theory would make it. He assumed that the earth became solid throughout, because rock being heavier than its lava, instead of floating, as ice floats on water and as solid iron floats on molten iron sank to the centre. By this mere assertion the estimated age of the stratified rocks was limited by the date at which all the externally cooled lava had sunk to the centre of the earth and made a solid earth having a uniform temperature, and the total period was fixed at from 20 to 40 million years. Unfortunately the theory on which this estimate is based is unable to explain the enormous foldings of the earth's surface. If the earth had been solid for twenty million years the constant wearing away of mountains would long ago have brought all land down to sea level or even below it, whereas it is known that the Himalayas and the Alps have been raised in very recent geological ages, and that the former are moving at a measurable rate, and one feels inclined to adopt any view which will show the earth's surface to be of the nature of a crust like the floe ice of the polar seas. Professor Joly's estimate of nearly a hundred million years for the age of the sedimentary rocks of the earth was based on the idea that the saltness of the ocean is due to the slight trace of salt which is carried down by rivers. He therefore divided the ocean salt by the annual river salt and arrived at his estimate. He made no deductions for salt which is found in rain water, nor for the fact that only a very small surface of the earth, say 18 per cent., consists of exposed primary rocks, which alone should be considered as having provided the ocean salt. He also overlooked the fact that such drainage waters contain very little salt, and that sedimentary rocks contain more salt than the primary ones. Repeating the estimate by dealing only with those rivers which flow from granitic regions, GEOLOGICAL EECORDS 123 the age of the stratified rocks works out at a few thousand millions years which is just what Professor Joly wished to disprove. Estimates of the age of the stratified rocks have fre- quently been based on their thicknesses and the rate oi - deposition, but more precise methods and fuller informa- tion than is yet available will have to be resorted to before it can be hoped to make even a rough guess. Yet unless something is known about the process which has given us the rocks in which fossils are embedded, unless some rough idea can be formed as to how much evolutionary history has been lost to us, how little has been preserved and what an enormous proportion of this residue is hidden away, until one can feel all this, one cannot expect to grasp the full meaning of evolution, the slowness and persistence of its efforts, the direction in which evolution tends, nor the general nature of this apparently the grandest manifesta- tion of energy. The importance of the subject will, it is hoped, excuse what may otherwise appear to be a digres- sion into an almost technical subject. In order, however, not to appear too speculative, numerical values, as in the chapter on matter and energy have here and there to be introduced and brief calculations made. Temperature measurements made in numerous mines and bore-holes have revealed a fairly uniform temperature gradient in Europe, ranging from 40 to 60 feet per one degree Fah., or 30 meters per 1 degree C. Combining in each case the temperature gradient with the known con- ductivity of the rock, an estimate can be made that in Europe at least the earth's surface is losing as much heat per annum as would raise the temperature of a sheet of water 1 foot thick by about 1 to 5 degrees Fah., or 1 cm. thick by about 20 to 90 degrees C. Faith in this rather wide estimate is, however, at once shaken on finding that the rate of loss of heat in one and the same bore-hole differs at various depths. For instance, at Kentish Town the conductivities of the upper London clay and of the 124 UNITY IN NATURE underlying upper green sand are nearly identical, yet the temperature gradient per 1 degree Fan. is 44 feet in the one and 91 feet in the other, implying that the London clay is giving off twice as much heat as it is receiving from below. Is this perhaps due to radium in the boun- dary of the two strata? Then, also, there is the serious difficulty with regard to ocean temperature. Sea water is slightly compressible, and at great depths it is therefore slightly denser than above and would have no tendency to rise unless heated from below, nor would this tendency make itself felt unless the temperature increased 1 degree Fah. per 25 miles depth, which would be imperceptible. If then the oceans are receiving heat from their beds their temperatures should be uniform or slightly warmer with the depth, but actual measurements show that there is a decrease of temperature, just as if heat were passing from oceans down into the earth. Is it possible that under the oceans the earth is losing no heat? If that were so then Lord Kelvin's estimate must be manifolded. The doubts which these few figures throw on the pre- mises from which physicists start do not affect the general experience that under Continents at least the temperature steadily increases towards the earth's centre, and that at a depth of 10 miles there should be a temperature of about 1,000 Fah. (red heat), that at a depth of 20 miles all known rocks should be melted, and that at 30 miles even iron would be fluid. Added to this, it is known that under enormous pressures even solids are semi-fluids, so that it is not unreasonable to assume that the earth's crust is float- ing on a molten liquid, or on a solid which is of the nature of a fluid. Tidal and astronomical speculations demand a body which must be more rigid than the hardest steel, but as this condition does not seem to exist, it is reason- able to doubt the correctness of the theoretical specula- tions. In fact, as regards the tides it has now been found necessary to take into account natural oscillations of the oceans which were formerly overlooked. Earthquake GEOLOGICAL RECORDS 125 wave velocities are now helping to determine the internal elasticity, and already they reveal that the interior con- sists of concentric shells of different materials. Attempts to determine the thickness of the crust will, it is hoped, soon succeed, for the difficulties of the problem do not seem to be insurmountable, but as yet the thick- nesses can only be guessed at. Thus even if observations of the temperature gradient should not be conclusive, an estimated thickness of over ten miles would be arrived at by applying observations on sheets of ice to the earth's crust. Under the conditions of air and water temperatures as they exist, for instance at the North Pole, a definite thickness of ice of about 8 feet will be attained no matter how irregular the upper surface ; even supposing that the irregularities have been caused by a crushing and shelving similar to that which takes place with the earth's moun- tain ranges. Even with very thick ice it will be impos- sible during any length of time for the atmospheric cold to maintain more than eight feet of thickness of ice in a frozen condition, for the under portions of shelved ice will melt away by contact with the sea- water, just as snow piled on a sheet of ice causes it to melt away from below. JSTow the ratio of the thickness of the polar ice to the irregularities of the surface heights is certainly not less than one to one and probably not more than four to one. In other words, pack ice in which there are surface irregu- larities of over eight feet is not likely to be thinner than eight feet nor much thicker than thirty feet ; if thinner it would fall to pieces, if thicker it would be too strong to be crushed into irregular shapes. Now the maximum heights of mountains and the depths of oceans are about five miles, making ten miles difference of level, from which it may be argued that the thickness of the earth's crust, always supposing that it is floating on lava or molten iron, is not likely to be less than ten miles nor more than forty miles. It is also probable that in former ages when the earth may have been hotter than 126 UNITY IN NATURE now, its crust was thinner and its mountains less high than now, possibly not reaching above the ocean surface, under which conditions stratification will at first have progressed very slowly, for the ratio of land to sea area will then have been less 'than now, but it is difficult to say whether after mountain ranges and Continents had been formed, these have occasionally been all reduced below sea level. The only prospect of doing this is through the study of the fossils of land plants, for until mammals were evolved in comparatively recent Eocene ages, all other animals were so constituted that they could live under water and would survive if all lands were flooded. The end of the world, contrary to general belief in fire and brimstone is therefore more likely to come when the earth has grown solid, for then all Continents will have been worn down and no new foldings of the earth's crust can occur, then all the world will be submerged and of mammals only whales, walruses and seals will survive and such furred animals as can live on ice. Confirmation about the fluid condition of the earth's core can be gathered from recent geodetic surveys which show that mountains are less dense than Continents, and Continents less dense than sea bottoms. In fact recent observations indicate that sea bottoms are very heavy. The average density of the earth is very nearly 5'527 which means that the earth is composed of materials about twice as heavy as ordinary rock. Cold iron is fully two and a half times as heavy as rock. The density of molten iron is 6'5, and under the higher temperatures to be expected in the interior it may be 6'0. Now the earth's mean diameter is roughly 8,000 miles, or exactly 41, 805, 000 feet, or 501,660,000 inches. The average height of dry land spread over the whole earth is 675 feet, and if thrown into the ocean the sea level diameter of the earth would be increased to 41,806,350 feet. The average diameter of the earth's dry crust would be 41,790,000 feet. If the density of the earth's shell below the oceans is assumed GEOLOGICAL EECOEDS 127 to be two and a half times the density of the ocean, water being taken as one, a very simple calculation shows that the inner core of a density of 6 would have to be two million feet smaller in diameter than the outer one. Even this thickness of one million feet or say 200 miles of probably molten rock, represents a coating of only one fortieth of the earth's diameter, but it is possibly from five to twenty times thicker tlian its hard outer crust. It is, of course, highly probable that the transition from light rock and light lava to heavy lavas rich in heavy, and, to us, precious minerals, down to the possible iron core is a gradual one. This arrangement would give great stability to the floating crust. If this were not the arrangement, if the earth's core were of uniform compo- sition, one might safely expect that the cooling of the outer regions would result in a boiling up of the interior, a process which on the sun is perhaps the cause of sun- spots, and on the earth would cau.se convulsions of its crust, in comparison with which volcanic eruptions would be child's play. Possibly such upheavals have taken place in the heavy central core, carrying up vapours of intensely hot but heavy metals ; these may have condensed under mountain tops and are, like platinum in the Urals, greedily sought after by mankind. Recent comparisons of earthquake pressure waves seem to show that the earth has a centre core which is either much denser than the outer layers, or more elastic than these and possibly of a semi-gaseous nature. In speculating on the condition of the earth's interior, physicists and mathematicians have paid comparatively little attention to the theoretical discovery, confirmed experimentally by Lord Kelvin and others, that substances which are lighter in the solid than in the fluid state, as for instance, water (ice) and iron, melt at lower and lower temperatures if subjected to higher and higher pressures, whereas substances which are heavier when solid than when fluid, are more difficult to melt with increasing 128 UNITY IN NATURE pressure. The melting temperature of iron sinks 10 F. for every 1,000 feet of rock pressure, which change, if true, for all pressures would mean that at a depth of one million feet, iron might be expected to be fluid at any tempera- ture, or at any rate, at some comparatively low ones. On the other hand the melting temperatures of some rocks seem to increase with increasing pressure which would mean that the earth's hard crust may be thicker than say the 10 miles which have been estimated merely from the observed temperature gradients. These few illustrations, which can hardly be called argu- ments, tend towards the view that the earth has a molten core of some heavy material, which is surrounded by a lighter fluid (lava) on which the still lighter earth's crust floats, while the oceans fill the depressions in that crust. Also that the irregularities of the earth's crust are due to differences in density, the sea bottoms being of heavier material than the mountain chains, or at any rate, that they indicate such differences. On these assumptions one can now make a rough calcu- lation of the thickness of ocean bottoms. Assuming, as before, that mountain rock has a density of 2-|, water being one, and assuming also that sea bottom rock has a density of 2f , then as the difference of level between Tibet and the seabottom of the Northern Pacific is about five miles, it follows that the thickness of the solid bottom below the sea would have to be about 38 miles, because the pressure of 38 miles of rock of the density 2J and 3 miles of ocean water amounts to 38 x2J + 3 x 1 = 107|, which is exactly equal to the pressure of 43 miles of rock of the density of 2^, the product being also 107^. The nature of changes of form will be understood from the following brief sketch. It is well known that the underground isothermal surfaces follow approximately the contour of the outer surface of the land. In addition it has been found, and GEOLOGICAL RECORDS 129 it seems reasonable that this should be so, that the tem- perature gradient is steeper under recently raised moun- tainous land than under plains. It is therefore reasonable to assume that if the sea bottom with its heavy bottom constituents, which are good conductors of heat, is 36_ miles thick, that a raised country like Tibet may probably be not more than 10 miles thick, or at most 20 miles, which means a not unreasonable temperature gradient of 1 F. in about 60 feet. Similar estimates could be made with regard to the Southern Pacific and the Andes. What happens, firstly, if the earth is shrinking due to cooling, and secondly, if the dry land is being worn away and deposited over the ocean bottoms? Lord Kelvin assumes that the rate at which the earth is cooling is diminishing. This leads mathematically to the conclu- sion that the core is cooling faster than the shell, like an apple whose juicy inside shrinks and whose leathery shell shrivels, and it is thus hoped to account for the crump- lings of the earth's surface, known as mountain ranges. It has, however, been shown that this cause is insufficient to account even for recent foldings such as the Alps and the Himalayas. Still less will this cooling account for miles of overthrust in the Alps and in Scotland. No physicists seem to have considered the case of the earth cooling at a uniform rate throughout when crumplings would of course not occur, and little attention seems to have been paid to the other possibility that the earth may have been cooling at an accelerated rate, due perhaps to better radiating power as the atmosphere got cooler and less saturated with water vapours. Accelerated cooling means that the crust shrinks faster than the core and that it will frequently split like a drying clay ball. Some explanation of this sort is, however, required to account for the numerous dykes which, as is well known, are merely earth cracks filled with solidified lava. None of the existing theories accounts for the phenomenon that even at present the earth's crust may simultaneously 130 UNITY IN NATURE crack in Iceland, while the process of crumpling and building up of mountain ranges is going on in other parts of the world. Evidently both local expansions and contractions are and may have been active together, and these can most readily be explained by denudation effects. Consider the case of the South American Continent with its high mountain range in the west and its sloping tableland with enormous rivers in the East. Imagine that snow, ice and rain are eroding and dissolving away the mountain tops and depositing the sediment in the Atlantic, then two things will happen : weight being removed from the outer surface of the Andes, these being buoyed up from below by equally light but fluid matter should rise, and at the same time the load added to the Atlantic ocean bed should weigh it down. This abrasion and sedimentation will proceed without any material change in the effective thicknesses, for the surface temperature of the exposed mountain tops no matter how fast they wear away will remain what the atmosphere makes it, and as the tempera- ture gradient is also an unchangeable quantity, the depth at which a change from solid rock to fluid lava occurs, would also remain unchanged. For instance, if at present there should be a depth of 50,000 feet of solid rock under the Andes, and if about 50 feet of the surface were to be carried away and a contour reached where the temperature is now 1 F. hotter than on the surface, then the newly exposed surface would soon acquire the present atmospheric condition and would lose its 1 F. excess tem- perature. But as the process would naturally be a very slow one, the whole crust would cool down by 1 F. and the point at which the change from solid rock to fluid lava occurs would not be at 49,950 feet, as would be the case if the abrasion had been sudden, but would still be 50,000 feet as at present. This means that for every 50 feet of rock removed from the outer surface, 50 feet of lava would be added by solidification to the under surface. GEOLOGICAL RECORDS 131 If, as is very probable, the lower strata which melt away under the Atlantic are heavier than the deposit added from the Andes, then the total weight of this part of the earth's crust, in spite of the added deposits will be lighter than it was, and the newly formed upper surface will rise instead of retaining a constant position. This rising is the almost universal experience of the ocean beds near all large rivers. Thus Ravenna, once a seaport town, is now four miles inland and well above the sea level. The same is true of Eridu and of Ur, the home of Abraham, ancient coast towns which are now more than a hundred miles inland. In fact, the Euphrates and Tigris valley is the grandest recorded case of rising of land above sea level, and probably the home of the legend of the deluge or rather of the emergence of land out of the sea. There in about four thousand years, roughly speaking, 10,000 square miles of sea bottom have risen out of the ocean and the process is still proceeding. What an ideal land for a peacefully increasing population ! The Persian Gulf is still being silted up with river sediment, and where it touches sea level a continuous rise is noticeable. The same action is also going on at the mouths of the great rivers of Africa, India, China, Siberia, North and South America. New and comparatively light strata are there depressing the old strata of which the heavy bottom melts off, the total effect being a raising of the shore. At the same time the tops of the mountain chains are being worn away, and yet they are either maintaining their heights or rising perhaps faster than they wear away. This would have to be the case if the lava which flows upwards and solidifies is lighter than the removed rock. Finally after millions of years the last stratified covering will be worn away, and then the uppermost part of the cooled lava will appear at the surface as intrusive rock. The most convincing illustration of this process is to be found in Ireland in a worn away portion of the Mourne mountain where the lower Silurian strata, after being tilted on end and having 132 UNITY IN NATUBE cracked, were melted away from below and now rest edge- ways on a mass of granite. The consequences of these changes are far reaching. Some newly formed igneous rock, say under the crests of the Andes, slowly rises, due to the wearing away of the overlying rock. These mountains are therefore cooling and shrinking. They have therefore either to tear across and cause outflows of lava, or if these rocks are strong enough to hold together, tears and cracks will occur at their extremities, as recently happened in San Francisco. One may, therefore, suspect that regions like the British Isles, in which innumerable dykes or cracks indicate long continued contractions, were once situated near the extremities of long mountain ranges which were being rapidly abraded. Possibly the earth cracks which still occur in Iceland may be due to the abrading action of the Greenland glaciers, an action which is believed to have commenced in historic times. The effect of adding the material from abraded moun- tains to the sea bottom is to raise its temperature and to cause it to expand. This results in thrusts which, search- ing out the weaker parts of the earth's crust, the relatively thin mountain ranges, causes them to arch still higher. A sort of suction is thereby created under mountains, and the lighter portions of the material which melt off the underside of the sinking ocean bottom is drawn towards them and after a time solidifies there. Two actions, therefore, take place, cracks due to contrac- tion occur at the ends of the mountain ranges, while mountain ranges between seas which are being silted up are compressed and thrust still higher upwards. Under special conditions the upheavals may easily be a hundred times greater than the thickness of the abraded material. The present general distribution of mountain ranges which are being abraded and of coast lines which are being added to are as follows : A long range of moun- tains stretches from Cape Horn to Alaska, interrupted by GEOLOGICAL RECORDS 133 the lower Panama and Mexican region. Almost parallel to this steadily contracting line is the steadily expanding and rising coast line of Brazilian mighty river deltas, the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence mouths. Almost at right angles to the American mountain chains but beyond the North Pole are the East Indian (Sumatra), Burmah, Himalaya and Afghanistan ranges, the Highlands of Mongolia, the Caucasus, the Alps and the Pyrennees. This line of contraction is surrounded by a triangle of expanding coast lines. In the south there is the Mediter- ranean, including the Nile delta, the Black Sea with the Danube, Volga, etc., the rising Persian Gulf, the mouths of the Indus, Ganges, etc. In the North is a long coast line traversed by the Siberian Rivers, the Baltic and the North European Rivers. In the East are to be found the deltas of the Chinese Empire and the Amoor. Thus, at present, the conditions seem to be that the two hemi- spheres are reacting on each other. It is not altogether improbable that the upheaval of the Asiatic and European mountain chains is due to the filling up of the Atlantic and of the Arctic Ocean by Canadian and Siberian rivers, and the rising of the Andes may be due to the filling up of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. This action may in comparatively recent geological periods have been accentuated or perhaps initiated by changes near the Central American coast, whereby the Gulf Stream, originally flowing in other directions, may have been diverted towards Northern Europe and Siberia and warmed these parts. Thus Greenland and Northern Europe are quite 10 F. warmer than other regions of the same latitude and 15 F. warmer than those of the Antarctic regions. At any rate, geologically speaking, the recent glacial period has now disappeared. If the increased temperature has affected the Canadian and North Pole regions for an average depth of 15 miles, then the expan- sion would provide an excess of material measuring a few thousand miles in length and one square mile in section. 134 UNITY IN NATUEE Assuming that the Himalayas measure 1,000 miles across, and that they have been recently raised or puckered by arching processes, then the above mentioned excess of material is more than ample to have produced the entire mountain range. Added to this there is the heating and expanding effect due to the crumpling of the mountain chain, and the already mentioned buoyant effect of the light lava, which always tends to flow to the highest levels. It is not impossible that here are the means of estimat- ing the time which has elapsed since the Eocene period when the Himalayas first commenced to rise. The abra- sion and general wearing away of a length of 7,000 miles of European and Asiatic mountains by glacial action and by rain proceeds at the rate of about 1 mile in twenty million years, or about 3 inches in a thousand years. It will, therefore, take 200,000 years to wear away 50 feet, which corresponds to a fall of 1 Eah. throughout the underlying rock. The contraction of 7,000 miles in 200,000 years will therefore have amounted to 360 feet, and seeing that dykes, which are simply cracks which have been filled up with lava, are about 10 feet wide, one may expect such rents to occur at the extremities of this mountain range about once every 5,500 years, either across this range or at its extremities. If the fluid lava imme- diately under any of these cracks be lighter than the solid rock it will overflow, as it occasionally does in Iceland; if it be heavier than the rock, the resultant earth move- ment will generally be an earthquake, and if an inrush of water takes place into the crack the result will most likely be an eruption, similar to that of Krakatoa, or more recently Pelhayo in the West Indies. It also appears that the sum of the maximum thickness of stratified rocks is over 400,000 feet, the average thick- ness being assumed to be 40,000 feet, and this addition to the sea bottoms must have been accompanied by a slow rise of temperature of the crust of say 800 Eah. with a GEOLOGICAL RECORDS 135 corresponding expansion of say one-tenth per cent. It is evident, therefore, that the total amount of crumplings and stretchings extending to a depth of say 15 miles of the Earth's crust can be represented respectively by a block of that depth and a hole of that depth covering one- fifth per cent, of the Earth's surface, which would be 200,000 miles square and fifteen miles deep. This amount of crushing and of cracking is more than ample to explain the formation of all the mountains which have ever existed and of all cracks and dykes. Thus it appears possible for crumplings and crackings to occur simultaneously at different parts of the Earth's surface quite independently of the general rate of cooling, and calculations, based on the assumptions from which Lord Kelvin started, which will not explain cracks and will only partially explain crumplings, cannot be relied on for estimates of the ages of the different strata of the Earth's crust. Nor does it seem right that such a problem should be limited and circumscribed by at first fixing, by very doubtful data and theories, the total period within which all stratified rocks have been formed and then attempting to fill in the historical sketch. A time scale is certainly wanted by palaeontologists, but except in early days, before Lord Kelvin made his estimate, little seems to have been done to study in detail the rates at which the various materials are deposited, and the tilting and upheaving and depressing of land seem never to have been thought of as influencing the calculations, yet they are an all important factor. Changes of level have been recorded in only a very few regions. Scandinavia seems to be rising at a rate of about a foot per century, Japan is being tilted, the East and South coast rising, the North and West coast sinking at about ten times the above rate. The Canadian lake region is also being tilted at the rate of about one foot per 1,000 miles in ten years, and in 5,000 years the Niagara river should discharge into the Mississippi. 136 UNITY IN NATUBE Holland is slowly sinking. These are the only measured changes, whereas nothing except geological evidence has been observed along the remaining 30,000 miles of coast line of the world. It is, therefore, perhaps reasonably fair to assume that the combined average rates of subsid- ence and of upheaval are say ten times slower than those mentioned above, or say, one foot per thousand years and that the average rate of tilting is also ten times slower, say one foot per 1,000 miles per century. It should, therefore, take 800 million years to tilt any strata through a com- plete right angle, as for instance, the Cambrian strata of Wales, and the Silurian strata of Ireland. Occasionally, as during earthquakes, tilting may progress more rapidly, but these sudden efforts are balanced by long periods of rest. General subsidences and upheavals also lend themselves for time estimates. Thus glancing haphazard at a detailed statement of the strata of a small north country coalfield one finds 31 coal seams, 85 seams of shale and clay, 21 of pebbles, pudding stone (gravel), 69 of coarse and fine sandstones and grits, 14 layers of basalt and other volcanic products, and 19 of limestone. The coal seams are certainly due to land plants, and must have been formed above sea level, probably in extensive plains like our fens, placed under tropical conditions. Much, of the volcanic material has also been deposited above water and the gravels will have been formed near river mouths either above or below sea level. Thus the ground will have been raised sixty-six times above or near to sea level. The grits and sandstones may be subaqueous deposits or perhaps blown sand like our dunes, and may all have been formed near sea level. The limestones have almost certainly been laid down in deep water, say below 500 feet or more, and they, as well as the clay shales, must have been far away from the shore, say 50 miles or more, when they were being laid down. The latter may have had 100 feet of water over them during their formation. GEOLOGICAL KECOBDS 137 Generally speaking therefore, while these 31 seams of coal were being formed there were 19 subsidences of 500 feet or a total of 9,500 feet and 85 of 100 feet or a total of 8,500 feet. The upheavals amount of course to just as much making a grand total of 36,000 feet, which at the rate of 1 foot per thousand years would represent a time interval of 36 million years for the laying down of 31 coal seams. Of course, until the reasons for subsidences and upheavals are known, or until more reliable rates can be fixed, much uncertainty will be felt as to whether these periods are a dozen or more times too long or too short. Nevertheless as there are some regions in which over one hundred coal seams are found, one above the other, one should at any rate be prepared to admit that the up and down movements alone, not counting the sedimentation, may represent longer periods of time than Lord Kelvin allowed for the whole of say 400,000 feet of average thick- ness of stratified rocks. With increasing information as to the ocean depths at which certain animals such as sponges, corals, molluscs, etc., lived, it may, perhaps, one day be possible to compare the rates of up and down movements with the rates of deposition, but these, too, are not only uncertain, but seem very much slower than physicists' assertions about the age of the Earth. The following steps may perhaps permit of a tangible result being attained. According to Sir John Murray, the volume of river water annually discharged into the oceans is 6,500 cubic miles, which is estimated to contain as much calcium as would produce 2,300 million tons or about 1,000 million cubic meters of carbonate of lime, such as limestone, chalk, etc. The oceans could hold much more of this salt in solution than they do, but myriads of animalcula extract it from the water and form their shells with it, and after death these sink to the bottom of the oceans covering about 160 million kilometers with what is now globigerina ooze. On 138 UNITY IN NATURE the basis of Sir John Murray's estimate the rate of deposi- tion is about 1 meter in 160,000 years, or say 1 foot in 50,000 years. Geologists, unfortunately, cannot give the average thicknesses of the strata but only the maximum thicknesses of those which have yet been discovered, and as it is likely that, in some regions where warm and cold ocean streams meet, the rate of deposition is much more rapid than in other parts, it is perhaps fair to assume that the maximum rate is ten times as fast as the above or say 1 foot in 5,000 years. Seeing that materials which have been deposited in the past, gradually rise to the surface and are washed away again to form new strata, it is evident that the ratios of the maximum thicknesses of various materials are also the time ratios in which the maximum thicknesses have been deposited. Confining oneself to the British strata down to the upper Silurian the following rates are obtained. Chalk, limestone, marbles, as above,! foot per 5,000 years. Shales, slates, clay, by comparison, 1 foot per 5,000 years. Sandstones, grits, flagstones, ditto, 1 foot per 2,000 years. The last of these rates is a rather arbitrary one, the data being uncertain and unimportant because these coarse deposits are neither very thick nor very extensive. In the present state of knowledge it is difficult and unnecessary to make a more detailed estimate, but if desired, corrections might be introduced from the follow- ing rough statistics. The sea bottom deposits cover the following areas : Sands and clays about 80 million square kilometers or 34 million square miles, lime deposits 160 million square kilometers or 68 square miles, clay ooze 130 million square kilometers or 55 million square miles. On dry land there are 28 per cent, regions unexplored or hidden by ice, 5^ per cent, desert sand, and 18 per cent, plutonic or semiplutonic rocks, making a total of 51^ per cent. The stratified rocks cover the following areas : Quaternary GEOLOGICAL KECORDS 139 14 per cent., Tertiary 6^ per cent., Secondary 15 per cent., Primary 13 per cent. Applying the rate of depositions given above, to 83,000 feet of maximum thickness of British strata, the total period of deposition sums up to 273 million years which is at an average rate of 3,300 years per foot. The upheavals and subsidences may on an average add two to seven thousand years, making say five to ten thousand years per foot of maximum thicknesses. This time unit is of the magnitude of the period that man seems to have lived in some sort of civilised condition. Manetho's list of the dynasties of Egypt, which is being confirmed by excavations, gives the date B.C. 5,800 for the first historical king of Egypt, while the Sphinx is probably still older by one or two thousand years, and may have been hewn nine or ten thousand years ago. This time unit of 10,000 years agreeing roughly with the estimated time required for the deposition of one foot of sediment, may, for con- venience, be called an " Era," and when geological know- ledge has improved, its exact value, whether ten or one thousand years, may be more accurately fixed. In the following table the maximum thicknesses in feet of strata in various parts of the world are stated in brackets, and of these the thickest are repeated as Eras in the margin, and then added together. THICKNESSES AND AGES OF GEOLOGICAL STRATA. (The bracketed numbers are maximum thicknesses measured in feet.) Age in Eras. MIOCENE : England (1425) OLIGOCENE : France (4200), Alps (7500). Eecent strata are probably nearly all submerged below the sea level, it will therefore be assumed that they represent 20,000 140 UNITY IN NATURE Age in Eras. UPPER EOCENE : England (660), Biarritz (3,000), Nari, India (6,000), Rocky Mountains, America (800) 6,000 MIDDLE EOCENE: England (300), Kirthar, India (9,000), Rocky Mountains, America (2,000) 9,000 LOWER EOCENE: England (500), Alps (5,000), Ranikot, India (2,000), Rocky Mountains, America (3,600) 5,000 Indications of a Glacial Period. The sudden appearance of mammals in the Lower Eocene suggests a probable long time interval, say 20,000 UPPER CRETACEOUS: England (2,500), France (800) MIDDLE CRETACEOUS : France (2,950) LOWER CRETACEOUS: England (2,350), France (140) TOTAL CRETACEOUS : Mexico (5,000), America : Livingstone (7,000), Montana (2,800), Colorado (2,000), Elder Creek (30,000), Canadian Pacific slopes (13,000) 30,000 UPPER JURASSIC : England (4,200), France (10,400), Germany (1,000), Russia (extensive) 10,400 LOWER JURASSIC : England (1,200), France (9,100) 9,100 TRIASSIC (Keuper) : England (5,000), Central Europe (1,230) 5,000 MUSCHELKALK : Central Europe (3,730), Alps (13,000) 13,000 UPPER PERMIAN or DIAS : England (1,060), Ger- many (4,000), America (1,000), Godwana in India (?) 4,000 MIDDLE PERMIAN: Damuda, India (10,000) 10,000 GEOLOGICAL RECORDS 141 Age in Eras. ROTHLIEGENDES : England (2,400), Germany (6,000), France (3,300), Russia (enormous, say 10,000), Asia (extensive), North America (1,000) 10,000 Indications of a Glacial Period. COAL MEASURES ; Wales 75 seams (12,000) followed uncomformably by Permian strata, Germany 142 seams (19,000), Russia 24,000 square miles 114 seam (extensive), Dwyka, Africa (4,000), Arkansas, America 20,000 square miles (24,300) 24,300 Climate believed to have been tropical. MILLSTONE GRIT : England (5,500) 5,500 LOWER CARBONIFEROUS : Northumberland (9,200), America (1,700) 9,200 CULM: Germany (2,500) 2,500 DEVONIAN : OLD RED SANDSTONE ; England (17,000), Norway (1,200), North America (9,500) DEVONIAN PROPER : England (14,000), America (extensive), New Zealand (10,000) DEVONIAN AND OLD RED SANDSTONE MIXED : in Russia (extensive) 14,000 SILURIAN (UPPER) : England (small area) (24,500), Baltic (600), Bohemia (5,700), America (enormous), Bolivia, Peru, Argentina, China, India (extensive) 24,500 ORDOVICIAN (LOWER SILURIAN) : England (small area) (13,500), Bohemia (300) 13,500 UNCONFORMABILITY, an interval of say 20,000 CAMBRIAN: England (small area) (18,000), Arden- nes (10,000), Spain (10,000), China (very thick), India (3,000), America : Rocky Mountains (7,000), Nevada (7,700), British Columbia (10,000). 142 UNITY IN NATURE Age in Eras. UPPER CAMBRIAN : Newfoundland (200), New York (5,000) 18,000 Indications of a Glacial Period. UNCONFORMABILITY, an interval of say 20,000 PRE-CAMBRIAN, TORRIDON : Scotland (10,000), Baltic (extensive), Eastern Canada (12,370), Moutaur (12,000), Colorado (12,000), KEWEEN- AWAN (50,000) 50,000 PRE-CAMBRIAN, HURONIAN : America (17,000) ... 17,000 Indications of a Glacial Period. UNCONFORMABILITY, an interval of say 20,000 PRE-CAMBRIAN, CONTCHICHING : America (20,000) 20,000 PRE-CAMBRIAN, LAURENTIAN. Say more than ... 20,000 SUMMARY OF AGES OF STRATA. Strata Total age Eras. Eras. Recent, say , 20,000 20,000 Eocene 20,000 40,000 Probable interval, say 20,000 60,000 Cretaceous 30,000 90,000 Jurassic 19,500 109,500 Triassic 18,000 127,500 Permian or Bias 24,000 151,500 Upper Carboniferous 29,800 180,300 Lower Carboniferous 11,700 192,000 Devonian or Old Red Sandstone... 14,000 206,000 Silurian (upper) 24,500 230,500 Ordovician (or lower Silurian) ... 13,500 244,000 Unconf ormability, say 20,000 264,000 Cambrian 18,000 282,000 GEOLOGICAL RECORDS 143 Strata Total age Eras. Eras. Unconformability, say 20,000 302,000 Keweenawan 50,000 352,000 Huronian 18,000 370,000 Unconformability, say 20,000 390,000 Contchiehing 20,000 410,000 Laurentian, say more than 20,000 430,000 NOTE. The Pre-Cambrian strata, including some not mentioned in the above tables have proved difficult subjects with which to deal, but the above thicknesses and their order of succession are probably not far wrong. Taking an Era as representing 10,000 years, the above total works out at over four thousand million years. If, however, the times required for upheavals and subsidences be entirely omitted, and if it be assumed that the rate of deposition of maximum thicknesses is not ten times but thirty-three times faster than the mean rate, then one Era would represent only 1,000 years and the age of the stratified rocks would work out at about four hundred million years. It will be noticed that if this faster rate be adopted each geological sub-division or strata in the table represents about ten, twenty, or thirty million years or say three, six, or nine hundred thousand human generations. But seeing that during the 300 generations (10,000 years) since the supposed dawn of civilisation, man does not appear to have changed, though he has invented houses, imple- ments, clothes, cooking, and many other things which must affect life, one may fairly ask whether Evolution could, in say, 2,000 such periods, which is here assumed to be the time interval between the Cretaceous and Eocene have produced all the mammals ; the whale, the ungulates, the carnivora, etc., which quite suddenly appear in the early Eocene? Is it not more likely that the slower scale of 10,000 years per Era is nearer the truth? 144 UNITY IN NATURE This estimate, or rather guess, as to the age of stratified rocks may by many be considered superfluous and should have been replaced by a brief statement by some well known authority. Unfortunately, due perhaps to Lord Kelvin's repeated assertions, geologists have feared to tread this problematic path, and there is at present no reasonably definite statement on this question by any man of weight. This is an advantage to the readers of these pages, who, being initiated into one method of making estimates, can carry these out according to their own inclinations. But whatever the numerical result arrived at may be, they will very soon have to admit that the great manifestation of energy, called Evolution, has been at work over a period which puts into shade all but such primitive manifestations of energy as are dealt with by Astronomy, so that on account of its persistence alone Evolution deserves to be singled out for special admiration. It is however not only the length of time that Evolution has been at work, but also its infinity of resources which claims attention. Blindly striving, like all mani- festations of energy, aiming at economy of material and specialisation of itself, this form of energy has never lost heart, neither in face of its own numerous failures, nor when thwarted by more primitive forces of nature. Thus in the lowest strata to be found in Canada many layers are found of graphite, which, it is believed, is over- heated organic matter, its total thickness, so it is said, exceeding that of our own coal fields. Is it possible that the world was once full of life, possibly vegetation of some sort, during the days when the coal measures were being laid down, and that some gradual, but fearful catastrophe destroyed all that life, and that Evolution had to commence afresh? Has there been a past end of the living world, and if so, what was the cause of its ending? Was it fire or water? It has already been suggested that in the same way as GEOLOGICAL EECOEDS 146 the thickness of the Polar pack ice determines the heights of its irregularities, so also does the thickness of the Earth's crust determine the heights of the mountains above the sea bottom, which at present are about 10 miles. During the early history of the stratified rocks, when the Earth was warmer than now, the crust will probably have been thinner than at present, and the differences of level between mountain tops and sea bottoms may have been less than three miles, under which conditions there would have been no dry land, for the average depth of the ocean is 8,150 feet or say one and a half miles. This may have been the case when the Earth's crust was about one-third as thick as it is now, and this case must recur when the Earth has grown quite solid and the mountains have been worn away. Then, as may have happened in the past, all surface life, all land plants, all air breathing animals except the whale, the walrus, etc., would perish. It is not necessary to suppose that the crust has been steadily growing thicker, it may have varied its thickness, and this may have resulted in there once being very high mountains, and at other times entire or partial submerg- ence. The most probable causes for changes of thickness would be these very changes of level which they produce. It could be shown, but the subject is rather mathematical, that although the sun is the cause of the heat in the atmosphere, the amount of heat or rather the temperature near the Earth's surface is determined by the heights of mountain ranges, which, as the atmosphere tumbles over them, causes it to get thoroughly dried, mixed, and heated. It can be shown that, roughly speaking, for every 1,000 meters, or say 3,250 feet added to the highest mountain ranges, the average sea level temperature of the Earth would rise 10 C. or 18 F., and conversely a wear- ing away of mountain ranges to this extent would lower the surface temperature by this amount. If then, long before the Andes and Himalayas, which are quite modern 146 UNITY IN NATURE mountains of say 25,000 feet, were raised up, no other mountains of more than 10,000 feet high existed on the Earth, its surface temperature will have been about 30 C. or 54 F. lower than it is now, which means, that Klondyke conditions would have prevailed right down to New Orleans and also across the Mediterranean. On the other hand, if existing mountains were to be pushed up to heights of 40,000 feet, sub-tropical conditions would extend almost to the Poles. Nearer the Equator the atmosphere would then be not only terribly hot, but also heavily laden with moisture, and vegetation rather than animal life would flourish. This may have been the condition during the coal age and perhaps during the Laurentian age, whereas during the recent glacial period, during the Permian, at the beginning of the Cambrian age, and during a portion of the Huronian age for which periods indications of glacial action have been found, our mountains may have been very low. If for millions of years the Earth's surface had once been very cold, due to small differences of levels, the crust of the Earth would grow uniformly thicker than it is now, even only to the extent of a 3,000 feet correspond- ing to a drop of 48 F. brought about by a lowering of mountain ranges to two-thirds of their present height, and any crushing movements which then occurred would pile up mountains more than fifty per cent, higher than the present ones. On the other hand, when high mountains had come into existence, when tropical heat and torrential rains had been the order of the day, the Earth's crust would grow thinner again, especially under the mountain ranges. The material which was worn away would not necessarily be made good by upheavals and shelvings of the crust, which would be rather weak, and a period in which the ranges of mountains would be low might follow. There have been attempts to explain glacial periods astronomically but they are not very convincing, though should they be established on a reliable GEOLOGICAL RECORDS 147 basis, a very good time scale for geological events will have been introduced. Temperature variations are not the only possible changes which may have affected life on the Earth. Who has yet explained the presence of chlorine which, as salt, exists in our oceans? It cannot be found, except in mere traces, in the plutonic rocks, and if, as has here been suggested, these are merely re-melted stratified rocks, the presence of even considerable amounts of chlorine would not account for its origin. Vague suggestions are now and then made as to the possible origin both of the chlorine, the hydrogen and the nitrogen on the Earth, but they lack definitiveness unless it be assumed, as has here been done, that interstellar space contains gaseous elements and that these are absorbed by such cosmic flakes as pass through them and are conveyed to the suns and planets. Without such carriers no gases could attach themselves to these bodies. Now there is a solitary record mentioned by Chladin (Die Feuerkugeln) in his list of ancient meteorites which says that the waters of a lake in Asiatic Turkey once sud- denly turned so terribly bitter that all its fishes perished. Is it possible that this lake was struck by a poisonous meteorite, which, like the celebrated one in Sweden, may have consisted of cosmic dust, which had traversed some far off interstellar region in which chlorine or its compounds predominated, and had absorbed these, just as it would have absorbed hydrogen if it had traversed the great nebula in Orion? Whether this incident be a true record or not, it is at any rate conceivable that cosmic dust, either as meteoric flakes or as cometary nucleii charged with chlorine or hydrochloric acid, may at one time have entered the solar system, that, on nearing the sun, this gas may have been driven off in the form of comets' tails, and that it then floated about and gradually attached itself to the Earth and other planets. The first effect of the addition, even 148 UNITY IN NATURE if only a slow one, would have been to kill almost all, if not all, life which was then existing either above ground or below water. After a lapse of time the soda and other salts in the rocks would neutralise the chlorine or acid and would form the common salts of the ocean. Life, however, would have had to be restarted, possibly under more favourable conditions. The production of lime skeletons of which most fossils consist would now be facili- tated, for salt helps to dissolve the nearly insoluble lirne salts and is a very important auxiliary in the body. Is it possible that such a catastrophe occurred after the Laurentian age, and that the diatomacea (minute plants), radiolaria, and the silica sponges all having silica frames which are not attacked by acids, are survivals of the first creation? These are certainly very hardy plants and animals and even if first evolved under fresh water conditions they may have adapted themselves to salt water when this came into existence. The further and further back one is able to trace them the more they seem never to have changed their form. One such cometary or cosmic catastrophe may have been followed by another. It still remains a puzzle to geologists why the material of entire strata is generally so very uniform. Why, for instance, is the lower carboni- ferous strata the world over almost exclusively composed of limestone? Why are the cretaceous strata nearly always chalk? Is it possible that at odd times the Earth was bombarded either with carbonate of lime meteorites, carrying carbonic acid, a gas which has been recognised in distant stars and which is suspected in the tails of recent comets? A dose of carbonic acid gas may have been thrown into the solar system of which a part reached the Earth in the Pre-Cambrian age and again during -the Carboniferous age, on each occasion it would attack the felspars, and would appropriate the lime, and leave the silica and alumina to shift for themselves. In fact, if all the carbonic acid of the limestones and all the hydrochloric GEOLOGICAL RECORDS 149 acid of the ocean salt were removed from the Earth's surface and the remaining constituents of the crust melted together, the product would be a kind of felspar. This would mean that the original coating of the Earth may have been felspar, which by external addition oF acids has been split up into silica, carbonate of lime, sea salt, and alumina. These are, of course, mere specula- tions, but they open up possibilities which are inadmissible if one refuses to admit that extraneous matter can have joined the Earth. Life would almost certainly have been possible if at one time the Earth's crust contained even only a little carbonic acid, for this would suffice to supply the carbon in organic cells, but with each large addition of carbonic acid, and before this was joined to the lime of the felspars, organic life, if it had already come into existence, would be able to make wondrous strides. This may account for the luxurious vegetation during the Coal ages, and possibly during part of the Pre-Cambrian ages. The result would be enormous deposition of carbon in the Earth's crust and a plentiful liberation of oxygen. If this view be correct, the underground coal should just about balance the oxygen in the atmosphere, and this would be the case if on an average about 30 inches of coal were spread over the face of the Earth. Seeing that some coal fields cover large areas of land, and that occasionally the thicknesses of the seams aggregate more than 100 feet of coal, and that parts of these seams have risen to the surface and have been abraded whereby the coal has been lost, for it does not oxidise and is hidden away in more recent strata, then the above estimate of an average of 30 inches is a perfectly reasonable one. Thirty inches of coal ground up and mixed with 15,000 feet of average strata which have been deposited since the coal ages amounts to only one-hundredth per cent., a quantity which is too small to be sought for by analysts. It follows that on each occasion when either through 150 UNITY IN NATUBE external or accidental causes vegetation was so luxuriant and widespread as to cause many feet of coal to be laid down, the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere would be materially increased. This might mean death to many forms of life, just as a permanent increase of oxygen would either kill off or modify most of the a^ir breathing animals of to-day, and certainly an examina- tion of the following palseontological table shows that a large number of animals either disappeared or changed their forms during and after the coal ages. But it is of far greater importance that with every addition of oxygen the cell consumers and energy producers would be more favourably situated than before and animals of greater energy capacity would develop. Thus the reptiles, an air breathing family, as well as birds, were rapidly developed after the coal ages had increased the available oxygen. A similar, but unknown change may have come over the world between the Cretaceous and Eocene ages. At any rate with the dawn of the latter period practically all the mammal species have come into existence, whereas none existed in the previous geological age and mammals, which are air breathers and typical destroyers of cells and creators of highly specialised forms of energy require both abundance of oxygen and of vegetable food. These several views suggest themselves when glancing over the following palaBontological table but several things have to be borne in mind while doing so; firstly, the vast periods of time which have rolled on since the dawn of life on Earth; secondly, the persistence of form of certain animals, which seem, at an early period, to have attained the perfection necessary for living under all conditions which have since occurred and may yet occur. Especially are the radiolaria believed to date back to the most ancient antiquity. Thirdly, the enormous number of different forms of life. Thus it appears that 400,000 different species of animals have been described by GEOLOGICAL EECORDS 151 naturalists, and more are being found every day. Insects which are represented by only a few orders, placed in only four columns in the table, are said still to exceed 200,000 different forms. What the number may have been when insects were in their glory, before the days of birds and other enemies, it is difficult to say, for as long as there were no birds, the insect plague on Earth must have been more fearful than it is in districts near Volcanoes where after big eruptions all birds are frightened away for years from over thousands of square miles. With insects, perfection of form seems to have been reached at a very early date, the cockroach and scorpion having been found in Silurian strata and no material change seems to have taken place since then. This may be due to the fact that insects in their several stages of development live either under water, in the ground, or above it, and changes in the amount of oxygen would probably not affect them seriously. Fourthly, one should take note, how Evolution, this grandest of specialised manifestations of energy, has persistently been working towards improvement; not discouraged by the destruction of one or other of its chefs d'ceuvre, as for instance, the ancient and numerous trilobites and the more modern reptilian monsters, nor by its inability still further to improve certain of its creations, like radiolaria and insects, it has over and over again started afresh from more lowly forms. Only half satisfied with his latest vase, the potter (Evolution) has taken a new handful of common clay and started afresh. The instinct of the insects, their power to live indiffer- ently well in any one of the three elements, their power to burrow, to swim, to crawl and to fly, their hard external shells ; all these might seem the height of perfection, but Evolution was not content, energy of which it was a manifestation, did not in these wonderful forms represent the attainment of its persistent striving to be associated with a minimum of matter, for although insects are small 152 UNITY IN NATURE and light they also have little energy and generally live very short lives. Evolution tried again, it started afresh on a far more lowly form, one in which not the whole body, as in arthropoda, but only the vitals were encased. It created true eyes for some of the molluscs, as for instance, for the squid, or perhaps Evolution was limited to work with two eyes and improved these, and through slow stages it developed the fish with its nervous system enclosed in bone, out of these the reptiles and ultimately, but again from a more primitive form, the mammals with their large sized brain. The table has been arranged on the assumption that the forms of animals change more easily than their substance. Thus there are the plant-like radiolaria with their silica shells and sponges with their silica skeletons. Then come a crowd of animals in which either the bases or the shells are lime as in corals. Amongst these must be included the arthropoda, though the shells of the great insect sub-division are horny with a trace of phosphate of lime. In a third group which embraces the molluscs up to the mammals, the skeletons, or encasements of the vitals are lime and phosphate of lime. Eecently the discovery has been made that certain minute animals have iron oxide casings, these are not included in the table. These changes seem to suggest that Evolution has experi- mented, blindly but effectively, with all available materials and with all conceivable forms, and a survey of this work must engender an awe inspiring feeling that one is contemplating a living force, a something like life, a something that is a manifestation of energy, which cannot be located, any more than chemical energy can be located, but of which it is felt that it is a grand reality. The labour, incomplete though the results may be, which has been expended on this subject, gives a promin- ence to Evolution which, to those who care not about these things, seems undeserving. Is that possible? Can too much prominence be attached to this subject? Is not GEOLOGICAL RECORDS 153 this a manifestation of energy in which its striving is not only as grand as that of the more lowly forms, such as attraction, gravity, etc., but in which specialisation has been carried along such well denned lines that the secret of the strivings of energy seems to stand revealed? At any rate, as illustrating the essence of energy, Evolution will always deserve the attention which it is hoped this brief sketch of the vastness of its labours may have created. The paucity of geological records, which is disclosed in the following table, the difficulty of explaining embryo- logical changes, and the shortness of time since Darwin insisted on the recognition of Evolution as a living force, militate against a full understanding of the subject, the following chapter will therefore deal with Evolution rather in a speculative than critical mood. 154 UNITY IN NATTJKE Geological Strata. Doubtful. Protozoa. Silica Cases. Silica Frames. Lime Cases or Frames. Spongida Sponges. Protozoa Echinodermata, Sea Urchins, etc. Stone Lilies, etc Numbers of Species fc 000 to ooc H I 3 02 : * Schizopoda (incl. Opossum-Shrimp) 'S S 1 1 ; . * Myriopoda (incl. Centipedes) ' Cretaceous * Brachyura i : * (Cockroach) Insecta ... * (All livi ; * Arachnida (incl. Spiders, Mites, &c. ( Ammonites] Jurassic - : * Scorpionida (incl. Scorpions) I 1 I 3 1 I p j I S 'o a cS rt 1 *Goniates or Ammonoidea t : i Triassic - * Permian or Bias - : [Cumacea] : Upp. Carboniferous Low. Carboniferous Devonian and 0. R. S Upper Silurian - : * Lamellibranchiata ( Ordovician Unconformability Cambrian Unconformability Keweenawan Huronian Unconformability Contchiching Laurentian * and t indicate respectively the first and last geological appearance of the particular forms. indicates the geological appearance and disappearance of a short-lived order. TABLES 157 Geological Strata. Vital Parts encased in Carbonate of Lime. Skeletons and Nerve-Matter Sheaths of Phosphate of Lime. True Eyes. Molluscs (continued). Vertebrates. Pisces (Fishes). Numbers of Species. 1 V fe fc a 1 I fc Recent j3 JJ ca * 1 BB 1 2 2 *S to a 8 K : *Aturia - s 1 3 e I ? 1 1 & 1 * Marsipobranchil (incl. Lamprey) : * Asterospondyli (incl. Sharks) 1 PQ I "> 13 AH * Isospondyli (incl. Herring) : * Aetheospondyli Eocene Prob. Interval : * Texospondyli (incl. Devil-Fish) - * Chimaeroidei (incl. Skate) *Sirenoidei 1 > * "5" B j3 W 1 C c * Cretaceous Jurassic - Triassic - : j * Ichthyolomi t: 1 | Permian or Dias a> O Upper Carbon. ! c ^ O) 1 Recent * Permocorphi 2" 3 "o c EC t < ..-. | '. -i Modern I * Fishes : : 1 : * Caudata : : : * Ecaudata "e? 1 G0Z : I : * Chelonia (incl. Turtle) * Ichthyosauria - t : : : I O "o fi cS O * ; ; ; * Squimata (incl. Serpents) - Eocene Probable Interval "c? 33 C o 3 g cS { 1 is "C s I eoc 03 c s a 5 * : : * Petrosauria t ; Cretaceous Jurassic - >yrinthodontia - t j : * Rhynocho- cephalia t : Triassic - Permian or Dias - * Upper Carboniferous - Lower Carboniferous il Devonian and O.R,S. - Upper Silurian - Ordovician Unconformability Cambrian Unconformability Keweenawan ... Huronian Unconformability Contchiching Laurentian * and t indicate respectively the first and last geological appearance of the particular forms. indicates the geological appearance and disappearance of a short-lived order. TABLES 159 Geological Strata. Skeletons of Nerve-Matter Sheaths of Phosphate of Lime. Totals of Maxi- 1 mum Thickness 1 of Strata. True Eyes (continued). Vertebrates (continued). Aves (Birds) 1 Mammalia. Numbers of Species living o> 1 1 5 I 13 ,3 la I : [Ungulata] *(Hoofed) 1 i o IN G cS S Feet