§ II.—CHAPTER IV.

ELEMENTARY COMBINATIONS CRYSTALLISATION.

BENEATH the architectural structure of the earth, there is an interior elementary structure of great interest and significance. The stones of the building are not merely disposed in an orderly and fitting manner, but in the composition of the stones themselves there is found an order of the most exquisite kind. The separate masses of matter are not only arranged; but matter itself, with which we have been hitherto only dealing in masses, presents a constitution of the most exact and definite character, highly illustrative of the Divine wisdom. As geology makes us familiar with the mechanical, or, as we have termed it, architectural structure of the earth, chemistry unfolds its elementary constitution.

Chemists reckon at present upwards of sixty elementary substances. This; however, is a merely provisional reckoning, liable any day to alteration. A hitherto hidden bond of identity may yet be discovered between many substances which now obstinately resist identification. It is found, in 119fact, that only a comparatively small number of these substances enter, to any large and pervading extent, into the constitution of nature—viz., oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, and, among the metals, silicium and aluminium. Oxygen is considered by far the most abundant substance in the earth. United with hydrogen, it constitutes water; with nitrogen, and a comparatively small proportion of carbon, it makes common air; while it enters, at the same time, largely into every kind of rock in the crust of the earth. Carbon, again, is the main constituent of all vegetable and animal matters; and silicium, in nearly equal combinations with oxygen (making silica), is said to form the basis of about half of the rocks of the earth.

There appears to us to be something profoundly impressive in the contemplation of the few simple substances to which we can thus trace back all the multiform diversity of nature. How marvellous to reflect that the solid earth, the compact rocks, the limpid stream, and the clear atmosphere, the fields clothed with grass, and the valleys covered over with com, are only the varied combinations of a few elementary ingredients! So plastic is Nature! Science strips off the glorious forms in which she is everywhere robed, and brings us into her secret laboratories. But surely this does not diminish, but only heightens, the impression of wonderful intelligence which she everywhere reveals. So exquisite did nature’s forms seem to the Grecian mind, that a Divine Presence seemed to speak from all of them. Beside the beautiful there everywhere arose the spiritual. The Oread, the Dryad, and the Nereid, were the graceful 120embodiments of the plastic Life, that seemed thus to animate the mountain, the forest, and the ocean; and, surely, intelligence is not less but more visible, that science shows us the few ingredients which, in different combinations, induce these diverse phenomena of nature. Although the mystery has been so far unveiled, and we can look far beyond the simple-hearted view of Paganism, yet we cannot get rid of the truth to which it dimly testified. We find ourselves among the last analyses of nature’s processes, more impressively than ever in the presence of a living and presiding Intelligence.

This is in the highest degree evident, when we contemplate the special character of those elementary combinations with which chemistry makes us acquainted: for it is ascertained, not merely that all the great features and products of nature are compounded of a comparatively few elementary ingredients, but that these ingredients everywhere combine only in certain definite and unvarying proportions. They obey laws of the greatest simplicity and exactness, “which never change, and which govern the formation of compounds of all classes and descriptions.”⁶⁰⁶⁰   FOWNES’ Chemistry, p. 39. Thus “water, however produced, always consists of oxygen and hydrogen, in the proportion of 8 parts of the former to 1 of the latter by weight. Chalk, whether formed by nature or by the chemist, yields 43.71 parts of carbonic acid, and 56.29 parts of lime. The rust which forms upon the surface of iron by the action of the atmosphere, is as invariable in its composition as if it had been 121formed by the most delicate adjustment of weight, by the most accurate manipulator, being 28 parts of iron, and 12 parts of oxygen. This law is the basis of all chemical inquiry.’’⁶¹⁶¹   HUNT’S Poetry of Science, p. 253.

Where, again, the same elements unite, as they often do, to form different bodies, such combinations are always related as multiples. Thus, in the different compounds of nitrogen with oxygen, we find that with the same proportion of the former the latter unites only in the successive ratios of 8, 16, 24, 32, and 40. “There are no intermediate compounds whatever. And this law is perfectly general; whenever bodies combine in more than one proportion, a relation of this kind between the quantities concerned can be observed. It applies alike to elementary substances, and to compounds formed by the union of bodies themselves compound.”⁶²⁶²   FOWNES’ Chemistry, p. 41. There may be an interruption in the series of numbers, or the relation of the numbers may not be quite so simple as in the case mentioned, but an exact numerical relation is found to underlie all compounds. So, in the gaseous state, bodies only unite according to exact measures or volumes, depending upon the wonderful connection between the specific weight of a gas or vapour and its volume. The volumes are always equal, or multiples the one of the other, and any extra quantity that may be present is sure to be left over when combination ensues.

It is impossible to conceive anything more grand and simple than the mode in which the infinitely varied processes of nature are thus carried on. By merely multiplying 122the proportion of one of the ingredients, the most diverse substances are produced from the same elements. Thus, in the case mentioned by us, and so often instanced for its impressive simplicity—the combinations of oxygen with nitrogen—the several compounds are well known to possess the most different qualities—a definite increment of one of the ingredients making all the difference between a virulently noxious poison and the breath of man’s life. What an unerring providence and skill does this evince in the continual assortment of nature’s elementary products! What power, save an almighty one, could, from the mere varying composition of the same few elements, produce all this wonderful diversity of result? What intelligence, save an infinite one, could order and preserve with such a nice adjustment the infinitely multiplied combinations so as not to interfere with animal life and happiness? What striking and beautiful alliances, moreover, thus pervade nature! Things apparently the most opposite are yet radically akin. The pleasant nutriment and the noxious poison are of the same parentage; the rude lump of charcoal and the glittering diamond are the same substance. Matter is truly kindred in all its forms; nature a vast brotherhood, confessing to the same Maker and the same Preserver.

But what perhaps especially claims our notice is, the numerical exactitude thus found to lie at the root of nature. In breaking up its rounded and beautiful forms, they are found to rest on the most strictly arithmetical basis. It is seen to be the most literal scientific truth that the “mountains are weighed in scales and the hills in a balance.” 123As in the mighty movements of the heavens we are dealing with the most rigorous measurements; so, in the minute and hidden movements of matter, the great discovery of Dalton shows us to be equally dealing with such measurements. Whether or not we are justified in concluding all that the atomic theory demands, the law of definite and multiple proportions which it serves to express remains indubitable; and in contemplating the constitution of matter, this leaves us, in the last resort, face to face with numerical order.

Whence, then, this order? Science has disclosed its character; what has it to say as to its explanation? It has expressed, under the name of chemical affinity, all that it has to say on this subject. Elementary combinations take place under the influence of an elective force, so described with reference to the special dispositions to union manifested by all ultimate particles. It is under the operation of this so-called force that the constant interchange and balance of nature’s ingredients are alone preserved, and that its existing forms are maintained with such nice and unvarying discrimination. As we have, in the wide region of space, gravitation uniting all bodies, and drawing them to common centres, so we have the attraction of cohesion holding the masses of the different bodies together; and finally, chemical or elective attraction, serving by its occult power to give determinate character or form to every kind of material creation.⁶³⁶³   HUNT’S Poetry of Science, p. 262. But, after all, science merely conceals its ignorance by such general expressions. The laws in 124question are simply the last reductions of its persevering research; and so far from their furnishing any adequate explanation of the phenomena, they imperatively claim themselves to be explained. It is only, according to our whole argument, when we recognise in these general laws the operative modes of a Supreme Intelligence, that we reach a satisfactory meaning in nature, or an adequate explanation of its order.

There is a further order of inorganic matter peculiarly mathematical in its character, and well deserving our attention before proceeding to higher illustrations of our subject—that, namely, which is expressed in the beautiful and well-known phenomena of crystallisation. If, among the last results of chemistry, we find ourselves in the region of numbers, we here become conversant with the exact forms of geometry. Stones and minerals we are familiarly apt to regard as not possessing any definite shape and structure—an idea which lies with somewhat vitiating force at the bottom of Paley’s famous comparison of the stone found upon the heath, and the watch. In fact, however, there are few things so exactly defined as simple minerals; and this not only in their external figure, but peculiarly in their interior and most hidden structure. Crystallisation, which is the ordinary state in which a great number of the substances of the earth are found, is nothing else than a regular geometrical form, accompanied by and dependent upon a regular structure. It has been well described to be a “peculiar and most admirable work of nature’s geometry;” and so minutely and elaborately has nature wrought her geometrical patterns, that they are 125 found to reappear after the most minute subdivision. Beneath the fixed variety of external or secondary forms which crystalline bodies assume, there is an ultimate or primitive form retained by the smallest particles of each crystal. Thus, to employ the illustration of Dr Buckland, “we have more than five hundred branches of secondary forms presented by the crystals of the well-known substance of carbonate of lime. In each of these we trace a five-fold series of subordinate relations of one system of combinations to another system, under which every individual crystal has been adjusted by laws acting correlatively to produce harmonious results.” Again, he adds, “Every crystal of carbonate of lime is made up of millions of particles of the same compound substances having one invariable primary form—viz., that of a rhomboidal solid, which may be obtained to an indefinite extent by mechanical division.”⁶⁴⁶⁴   Buckland’s Bridgewater Treatise, pp. 576, 577. Some, as Professor Moh, reckon four, and others six, of these primitive crystalline forms.

It is needless for us to dwell upon the abundant theistic meaning which such phenomena present. The only conception which we can have of crystallisation, the definition by which alone we can express it, indicates, in the clearest manner, the working of intelligence. The geometric stamp is impressed on the minutest particle. The die is inwrought beyond the furthest process of cleavage or mere mechanical division. Shiver the crystalline mass as we may, the figure still lives. Where form is so deeply and curiously impressed, we must surely recognise a Former. Nature’s “admirable geometry” irresistibly points to nature’s great Geometer.