The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 21, July, 1859. Various
of God, from the time when the waters first subsided and the dry land appeared, in everything organized and inorganized, earth, air, sea, and their inhabitants, there is no element which was not in existence when the earth was without form and void.
Philosophers tell us that three hundred and fifty millions of years elapsed after the globe began to solidify, before it was fitted for the lowest plants. And more than one million years more were necessary, after the first plants began to grow upon its young surface, to bring it forward to the condition which the Divine Father deemed suitable for the reception of man. If the days of Cain and Abel were the infancy of the world,—as we have sometimes heard,—when will it come to maturity? Its divisions of life cannot follow the plan of animated beings; for, with an embryonic condition of an indefinite period, and an infancy of three hundred and fifty millions of years, more or less, we can hardly expect that it will really have begun to enjoy the freedom of adult life, before the human race will have attained to its earthly limit of perfectibility, or have so overstocked the surface of the globe as to make it necessary to remove to some larger sphere.
It is curious, we say, to think that everything now on the earth or composing its substance was present, though in far different form, at the beginning,—that the Almighty gathered together in this part of the universe all the materials out of which to create all the forms of things which it was his pleasure to evolve here through all time,—that in that nebulous mass were revolving, not only the gases which were at last to combine in various manners and proportions to form the rocky crust and the watery investment of the earth, but that in that dense and noisome cloud floated also the elements of all the beautiful objects that furnish the daily enchantments of life. Flowers and trees, birds and fishes, locusts and mastodons, all things, from the tiniest animalcule to man, were there, unmodelled, not even in embryo,—their separate existences then only in the mind of God. There, Christian and Saracen, Jew and Gentile, Caucasian and Negro, Hindoo and Pariah, all the now heterogeneous natures which are as oil and water, were blended in one common vapor.
Finally the condensation of all the gaseous elements began, and the aëriform masses became liquid, and the waters,—what mineral waters they were, when they were saturated with granite and marble, diamonds, rubies, arsenic, and iron!—thus deposited by the vapor, left a gas above them light enough to bear some faint resemblance to our air. Still this atmosphere was surcharged with vapors which no lungs could tolerate, whether of man or reptile; and other steps must be taken to clear it of its unwholesome properties. Then did the Almighty will introduce, one after another, the germs of plants,—first of all, the lower orders, the ferns, which seek the shade, and the lichens, which grow in damp and dark recesses, mosses, which cling to bare rocks, living almost on air and water alone,—everything which needed not bright sunlight to invigorate it nor soil to cling to. Year by year and age by age did these humble plants extract their nourishment from the murky vapors that shrouded the earth, and, after fashioning those gases into a living tissue of stems and leaves, year after year did they die and lay their remains upon the rocks, accumulating by slow steps a soil which would in time be capable of giving holding-ground to mightier plants. The trees came,—and gigantic they must have been; and every species of tree, shrub, and herb now upon the earth, and of all animals that walk, fly, or swim, was introduced before the creation of man.
It was as if the elements were too gross for the constitution of man, when they were first collected from the nebulous mass,—as if they needed to go through the intermediate forms of plants and animals, passing in succession from one to another, before they could be permitted to enter into the bodies of those beings who were to be in God's likeness. But, in very truth, the elements were unaltered by their many transmigrations. It was the divine act of God which caused every plant to spring forth and gave birth to every living thing. Every seed and every egg was at the first formed by Him. No sudden effort of man's will, such as that by which Pygmalion was believed to have animated the work of his chisel, nor any industrious current of electricity, passed for uninterrupted weeks through the purest gum, and stimulated by the enthusiasm of a Cross, can transform the worm to a breathing being, or reach the human climax by slow steps, even if the first one be in the humble form of a louse. When a new plant appeared, it was the hand of God that formed the seed. When a new species of animal came upon the earth, it was the same Power that created it. But the materials were not new; "out of the dust of the earth" was man created.
Oxygen, Hydrogen, Carbon, and Nitrogen,—do not turn away from us, gentle reader, we will not be grimly scientific, but a few of the terms of science must be employed, even here,—these four elements are the chief ingredients of all vegetable and animal structures. When separated from their connections, three of them are gases; and the fourth, in union with one of the others, is also a gas. In various combinations they form literally the dust of the earth, they make rock and water, vapor and air. In the hand of the Almighty, they are so many plastic elements, that form now a plant of the lowliest condition, now a magnificent oak, now a fish, and now a man. And the germ of each organized being bequeathes to its offspring the power to reproduce its likeness,—so that each succeeding generation is a repetition of its predecessor. There is no change in plants and animals from the first; the same materials in the same proportions that were selected by the earliest trees for their composition are chosen now; and in form and function the last animal is a precise copy of the first of his race.
If we attempt to trace a particle of matter, we shall find its wanderings endless. Annihilation is a term which is not applicable to material things. Matter is never destroyed; it rarely rests. Oxygen, for instance, the most important constituent of our atmosphere, is the combining element of all things, the medium of communication between the kingdoms of Nature, the agent of the interchanges that are continually taking place among all created things. Oxygen keeps life in man, by combining with his blood at every inhalation; it is absorbed by flowers, to be employed in the perfection of the fruit; many minerals are incapable of the various uses of society, until oxygen has attacked and united with them. It gives us lime and soda, the oil of vitriol, and common salt; the mineral pigments in common use are impossible without it; and the beautiful colors of our autumn leaves are due to the combination of oxygen with their juices. It enters into all plans and operations with a helping hand; animals and plants owe their lives to it; but when the shadow of death begins to fall upon them, it is as ready to aid in their destruction. Like calumny, which blackens whatsoever is suspected, oxygen pounces upon the failing and completes their ruin. The processes of fermentation and putrefaction cannot commence in any substance, until it has first taken oxygen into combination. Thus, cans of meat, hermetically sealed, with all the air first carefully expelled, undergo no change so long as the air does not get access to them. If the minutest opening remain, the oxygen of the atmosphere combines with the contents of the can, and fermentation or putrefaction follows. Rust, which takes the keen edge from the knife, is only another name for oxydation: keep the knife bright, and no oxygen dares touch it; but the slightest blemish is made a loophole for the entrance of the ever-watchful enemy, who never again leaves it until its destruction is complete.
All the elements have a great love of society; they cannot live alone; they have their likes and their dislikes; they contract alliances which endure for a time, but are dissolved in favor of stronger attractions.
We have mentioned the names of several natural elements. Let us see what they are, and what they have to do with man and the kingdoms of Nature. Beginning with man, let us see what becomes of him in course of time, what physical metamorphoses he undergoes, to what vile but excellent uses he is put.
That which forms the bone and muscle of a man this year may be upon his own table in the shape of potatoes or peaches one summer later. When Hamlet talked of turning the clay of Alexander into the bung of a beer-barrel, he spoke the simple truth. In that great play, Shakspeare appears to have had the transformations of material things much in his mind; for we find him alluding, in several passages, to the reciprocity which subsists between the elements of animate and inanimate things, and between the different members of the same kingdom;—as when, in conversation with the king about the dead Polonius, he makes Hamlet say, "A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat the fish that hath fed of the worm"; or where, over the grave of Ophelia, he traces the two ancient heroes back to their mother earth, in words some of which we have quoted.
The ancient mythology, which shadowed forth some truth in all its fables, turned these