The essential in matter is force. Strictly speaking, we comprehend nothing but forces. Every body manifests itself as resistance necessary to overcome if we wish to remove it from its place. What remains of the body if we think of it as deprived of this counter force? At least nothing remains that we can touch or by which we may obtain palpable evidence of its existence. Neither does there remain anything that we can see, as seeing depends upon resistance to light, reflection of the ether-waves. If the mountain exerted no resistance we would pass through it without feeling or seeing anything whatever.
True, there is perhaps matter—for instance, the ether—which we neither see[88] nor feel, but which still exists. This matter is then qualified by some other form of energy by which it manifests itself. Thus we comprehend ether as light, heat and colors, all forces, as well as gravity, electricity, etc.
Already from these suggestions it is evident that force is the only substantial thing in the material world. Without force, matter is nothing that may be comprehended either by the senses or by the reason. What we call matter is nothing but different kinds of energy.[1] We have space-occupying energy, chemical, electrical, mechanical forms of energy, and so forth.
How are these forms of energy related to each other? Between forms so different as tones and light, colors and mechanical work, there is at least[89] no connection apparent to external observation.
For a long time it was also believed that no such relation existed. It was only after 1840 that several scientists made the startling discovery almost simultaneously that physical forces may be transformed one into another. It proved possible to transform a certain quantity of heat into an equal quantity of mechanical energy, which again might be turned into equivalent quantities of electricity, light, chemical energy, etc. It was further found that these processes might be undertaken in the reverse order, so that the original form of energy could be restored in unchanged quantity and with unmodified qualities. Nothing was lost and nothing was added.
Recent science is founded entirely on these facts, which later generations probably will consider as the greatest of all the discoveries of the last century.
This law of the permanence and the[90] mutability of force is of immediate importance to materialism. As long as it was thought that the forces of nature were separate and different from each other, it was easy to imagine that the more inaccessible or mystic forms stood nearer life, yea, were life itself. The absurdity of such an idea is now obvious, since it has been shown that the physical forces may be transformed into one another and therefore are not intrinsically separate, but fundamentally the same force, acting differently under different conditions. Now, if life were a form of material energy, any form of physical force might be transformed into life and consciousness, into spiritual and moral forces. Life and consciousness might then be artificially produced, and we would rack our brains in order to find the mechanical equivalent of the intellect, try to measure it in amperes and volts, etc. But nothing of this kind is done, simply because it is impossible, as presently we shall see. Life cannot be transformed[91] into any form of material energy, and, vice versa, no form of material energy can be transformed into life. Life and physical force are, as to nature and substance, essentially different principles.
Although the law just referred to about the permanence and the mutability of physical forces thus seems rather to disprove materialism, it was not for this reason chiefly that we have related it. Our purpose is to find a basis in this fact from which the fundamental contrariety between organic and inorganic matter most easily may be explained, and thereafter to enter into this differentiation just as far as is necessary to decide the main point as to whether one form of matter can spontaneously produce another.
We recollect that the materialists endeavored to make the difference between organic and inorganic compounds as slight as possible. The former consisted of exactly the same elements as the latter and these elements[92] had exactly the same qualities in one compound as in another.
However true this may be, is not meat nevertheless something different from limestone, although limestone may easily be found that contains nearly all the elements present in the meat? In starch, sugar, fat, etc., precisely the same elements enter as in water and carbonic acid, but no materialist denies that there are important differences between these two groups of substances.
What is it, then, that essentially separates the two classes of matter (nothing but the most essential factors concerns us here)? If we ask this question of chemistry, we are answered that this quality is combustibility. Organic matter is combustible; inorganic is not.
But why should organic matter be combustible? Because fuel is as necessary to the organism as to the steam engine. To both their physical source of power is heat, and even the engine receives it through the combustion of[93] organic substances. All the fuel that is generally used is of organic origin, although we seldom think of this fact.
But why can we not fire an engine with inorganic products? Because these cannot burn, and the reason again is, that they are already burned. If this be true, they must once have been fuel themselves, must once have been in a burning state. How do we know this? Because the inorganic world consists almost entirely of chemical compounds that are only formed by combustion, when this word is used in its widest sense.
If these suggestions are correct, organic matter is to inorganic as fuel to the products of combustion. In the inorganic world the latter have been transformed to fuel which in a renewed combustion reproduces the same products as those of which it once was formed.
If this be the case our problem may be thus formulated: Can inorganic products of combustion again form[94] combustibles spontaneously? Can carbonic acid or water through the spontaneous activity of physical forces be transformed into sugar, starch, fat, etc.?
In order to decide if this be possible we must first know what combustion is, and we will therefore briefly explain what this term means.
Combustion is a chemical process, it is said, and this definition may be true, although it may also be misleading. In daily speech combustion is generally identified with the phenomena of light and the generation of heat, which we immediately observe, but chemical processes can neither be seen nor felt, because they take place in the inner world of matter which hitherto has proved inaccessible to human observation. Yea, chemical processes are so foreign to the experiences of our senses that chemistry, the science of these processes, is entirely founded on the deductions of our reason. The premises that our reason uses for its conclusions[95] belong to the physical world which is the outer side of matter that faces us. The phenomena that accompany combustion belong to this world and are, therefore, strictly speaking, not chemical but physical phenomena.
But even if these phenomena of light and heat, of which the latter especially interests us here, belong to the world comprehensible to our senses, they must nevertheless be intimately connected with the inner chemical process because heat is developed in nearly every chemical reaction. Heat is not created from nothing; there must be a cause for this force, and the cause cannot be anything but the chemical energy which in the chemical process is transformed into heat. In few words: What we generally term combustion cannot be identical with the actual chemical process. The light and the heat must, on the contrary, be considered as the external results of the chemical process, its physical effect.
By a close study of this physical[96] effect we have also been able to explain what happens within matter itself. As it is necessary to understand this in order to comprehend how heat is developed, we will endeavor shortly to outline the present scientific conception of the chemical process called combustion.
From the qualities of matter we have concluded that the bodies we see are composed of extremely tiny particles called molecules, which, however, are so small that with our optical resources we never shall be able to observe them. Even the smallest particle of dust visible to the eye must be considered as containing an enormous number of them. With molecules, however, we have not reached the limit of the divisibility of matter. They may themselves be divided by chemical forces into smaller material units called atoms, and these latter are therefore the building stones of which matter is ultimately comp............