THE LAWS OF NATURE:

AN ADDRESS

DELIVERED BEFORE

THE NATIONAL TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION,

AT

CINCINNATI, AUGUST 11, 1858,

BY

PROF. JOHN YOUNG, OF INDIANA.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Nature in all her compartments is under the operation of a divine power, which we term law. By this word we express a fixed course of things-a settled order of divine procedure. This force acts in

and through the material creation, but we look higher than matter for its origin. It involves in its very nature a constant forth-putting of power, and thus leads us up to God as the origin of motion. Natural law acts, not blindly, but with skill and plan, showing that it is the settled result of design and volition. The revelation of God then in natural law, is not a distant conclusion from a long train of premises, but a direct exhibition of the divine attributes to the human understanding.

We behold the power and wisdom of God in all parts of creation— in the heavens-in the earth-in the great wide sea-and greatest of all, in ourselves. Now I must assert that which may be strange, but yet is true, that if our eyes were opened to behold the material form and glory of the Creator, this could not afford a proof so full and conclusive of his existence as is daily before our eyes in the wisdom of his works. I do not need the resurrection of any gray haired Grecian in the name of Homer to convince me that he wrote the Enead. The hand and skill and poetic grandeur of a master appear in every line. Thus too, does the wisdom and forethought of Divinity appear in every law affecting matter or mind around me.

If I read not these records, or reading them believe not the truths they utter it is mere folly to suppose that the opening heavens themselves could drive away my doubts. In studying the laws of nature then, I must affirm that we are not dealing with the material, but rather with the divine and the spiritual. The movements are divine movements, the wisdom the wisdom that guides is a divine wisdom, and I am privileged to look upon God, not on a throne holding a

sceptre, according to the low conception which the ancients had of greatness, but to see him active in every leaf and giving force and vibration to every pulse of animated life. For 5,000 years, the carth had circled round the sun with careless regularity. Water during that time, and most likely long before, had ever tended to its lowest point of rest, fruits had fallen from the trees, and, if mythology be worthy of credit, gods have even fallen from the battlements of heaven. But till the days of Newton, this tendency of bodies was wrapped in mystery and surrounded by mistake. When that philosopher announced at length the law of gravitation, and determined the ratio of increase in its force, what a world of wonder struck the view of modern students. The world had subsisted for ages without a knowledge of this law, yet a slight change in the power and force of it would bring human affairs to ruin. Let it be suspended and the mountains might rise amidst the great expanse above, while the great works of men-the cities, and towers, and pyramids would join the everlasting hills and thread the mazes of an airy dance. Then let the force of this law instead of being suspended, be rendered twice as great as it now is. Our bodies would become like loads of lead, each weighing 300 or 400 pounds, and after a few futile efforts we would hopelessly abandon the power of locomotion. Then the sap of plants and trees would cease to rise, weighed down by greater force than that which bears them to the leaves. The death of all terrestrial vegetation would thus be inevitable during the first spring after the change. Look again at the disasterous results produced by any change in this law upon the positions of the vegetable calyx and corolla. Let gravitation be suspended, and nodding flowers would raise their heads and the germ would fail to receive the fertilizing pollen. Or let gravitation be increased and the pitcher-plant turned down would lose its water, the slim and bending stalks would break under the now oppressive burden of their flowers.

Suspend gravitation, and the muscular force of animals would run to waste through want of resistance; increase it and our nervous system would speedly give way under labors too great to bear. How infinitely numerous then are the adjustments of things to the power of this force. How small an act of Providence would be involved in tempering the wind to the shorn lamb, compared with these nice instances of balanced forces.

The second great step in physical science was certainly the discovery of definite ratio and proportion in chemical affinity. While by Newton's laws we ascend to the heavens, by Lavoiser's and Davy's discoveries we are privileged to look into the recesses of the smallest grain of sand, and behold God's wonders there. Why do elements combine, and why is the amount of that combination so accurately definite? Never did the human mind work out a more wonderful problem than this. If no philosopher ran naked through the public streets crying eureka upon its discovery, it was only because the modern discoverer is so used to wonders that nothing can destroy the equilibrium of his temperament. No such question as this could have been solved by the men of ancient times; the knowledge which its unfolding required, was deep hidden from their view. Franklin

must live and the laws of magnetic electricity must contribute to this wonderful elucidation. Shall we hastily run over the steps involved in this beautiful induction? 1. Magnets of like poles repel each other and of unlike attract. 2. When magnets are divided, every part, no matter how small, becomes itself a magnet. 3. The atoms then too small for human vision have each a north and south polarity even as the world. 4. This electric attraction then binds the atoms into a mass, when unlike poles are together. Such is the theory, simple enough in annuciation, but very important in practical results.

If magnetism induced by an electric current be the bond which gives solidity to bodies, then the electric current will be the most powerful agent known to man for separating combined elements.

This force is capable of presenting a stronger attraction to the elements than that existing between them, and thus their bonds are broken. They fly apart as readily as they previously rushed together. We hold then a force which can bind and loose, dissolve and re-arrange at pleasure. The same power that binds in sweetest concord, becomes itself the most powerful dissolver of unions. When this truth became known, the melting pots of the alchemist were laid aside. Fire blazing with seven fold fury, may raise steam to a white heat, but its elements still hold together; but the electric current parts them with a force gentle as the growth of flowers.

Those metals whose affinity for oxygen was great, defied the power of fire, but guided by this truth, Davy applied to them galvanism, their oxygen was taken off and the new mentals, potassium and sodium, first appeared.

The salts and minerals, either natural or artificial are numerous beyond human power to calculate, millions upon millions of every conceivable kind and quality, are ready made around us, or rise at the command of the modern chemist. Like a creating genius he utters the word, and lo, it stands fast. Yet all these are the products of sixty elements variously combined. The chemist knows the electric force of each atom, of each element; he knows the number of atoms that can be associated in any given case. Beyond this he needs to know no more, for by simple solution and juxtaposition, the great law of affinity will do its work, and thus myriads of new bodies spring up as if by magic at his bidding.

Now, notice for a moment, some of the disastrous consequence that would arise from altering this great law of affinity between bodies. Let the now inert nitrogen of our atmosphere become endowed with a stronger love for oxygen. These two now mix harmlessly in the air, but do not unite. Then the two elements would rush together, one atom of each to form that curious air called laughing gas. Then from Africa to Asia, from California to the shores of Britain, would one peal of wild and maniac mirth from intoxicated humanity, arise and swell on every breeze. Some have said laugh and grow fat, but universal nature would laugh itself lean. Yes, laugh even in the jaws of death, whilst breathing an atmosphere five times richer in oxygen than now. But the worst has hardly yet appeared, for more oxygen might still be added to the compound, until our air would become changed into that horrible burning fluid nitric acid. Talk

no more after this of the frogs or blood or lice, of the Egyptian plagues. Our common air can outdo them all. It needs only condensation and re-arrangement to produce of its own elements that which would burn up every living thing on earth and sea.

The great destroyer in our world is oxygen. It rusts our metals, sours our fluids, burns our timbers, and wears away our very bodies. Let its affinity be increased and all the world would be wrapped in one sheet of devouring flame. Iron would become hot and burst into a glorious constellation of burning sparks, the fat not merely in the frying pan but in our own bodies would immediately take fire. The timber of the forests would present one great conflagration; our prairies like new mown hay, would first smoke and then burst into flames. Nothing would remain unburnt but rock and water, and these would survive the catastrophe only because they are already the ashes of a previous conflagration. All nature would be dissolved by merely giving double force to oxygen.

In the operations of organic life, wonders still greater meet us at every step. The laws upon which life depends are perhaps not so manifestly within our grasp as those we have just exhibited. They will not come within the range of exact calculations. In many instances the life power holds in abeyance the chemical forces residing in the body, but in the other cases the results are governed by the same law as in dead matter. The gastric juice of the animal has a most powerful action as an acid upon flesh or food submitted to its operation. This dissolving power is chemical and can be exercised as readily outside the stomach as within the living tissue.

But whilst bone, and even ivory, may be decomposed by its power, the vital force suspends its action and utterly forbids the digestion of animal bodies while life remains. Therefore the living stomach can stand its action for 100 years without injury, while that same stomach would be dissolved in a few hours after life's departure. We thus stand upon the boundaries between two kingdoms, the animal and the mineral, and we occasionally see a conflict between the two classes of laws.

In the action of poisons and the burning of strong acids the chemical force is victor and the life power is destroyed. But in organic tissue the vital energy is generally in the ascendant, and holds in abeyance those influences that would tend to its destruction.

Speedily after the death of the body the chemical laws carry on a vigorous action. The nitrogen and hydrogen combine to form the odorous ammonia; phosphorus and carbon unite with hydrogen and produce phosphureted and sulphureted gases which diffuse smell of animal decay around, soon nothing remains but the mineral matter of the bones, and carbon in the form of humus. Thus that world of wonders, full of a thousand activities, trembling lately with nervous. tension, and penetrated all through with the purple current of life is totally broken up and passes off in new forms to nourish new bodies. The fiat of its Creator has endowed life with eternal activity in construction. Life first builds to itself a simple cell. Thus a wall is cast around the busy workshop of its future operations. Then in the fluid of that cell its motion is constant and ceaseless, until the

hour arrives when that life departs from its former habitation, and its old material is cast forth as waste.

Here need we indeed some great discoverer like Newton or Davy who will enable us to descend into this cell, and scan the life power in its first movements. Rapid, ceaseless motion has been seen in that life germ, but whence came its power, and when it retires, whither does it go? These are questions calling for solution.

Nor have we now even fully sounded the depths of mystery, still opening here. This life-power may be operating in a thousand different cells, and in each it may build its habitation after a different model. In the red snow it attempts no complicated structure but contents itself with single cell multiplication. In mold, again, it builds its cell into straight thread like stems; in mushroom plants, it constructs a stem and hood, but forms no leaf; again in sea plants these cells are woven into stem and leaves, but flowers are yet wanting. While in our common plants and flowers the original cellgrowth has transformed itself into tissues as varied as the mind of man can well conceive. Here a stem of pith, wood and bark, but all its material was cell-growth, then a leaf woven of flattened cells. Thus all, even to the crowning beauty of the vegetable kingdom, the rich and glossy petals, all are the elaborations of single cells. Pray in what school did these cells learn to form the wood tubes for the ascent of sap? What instinct taught those cells to form the velvet down of rose leaf? How did the painters of each flower know the colors to lay on.

Gentlemen, the classic poets have been criticised and examined until there is no more room for discovery. You must, in all literature and fine arts, walk in the foot-steps of a thousand predecessors. Even in astronomy, Newton and Herschel have gleaned the very stars in the heavens and counted their hosts, and called them by their names. But in the domain of animal and vegetable physiology, there is ample room left for discovery. New worlds are there whose shores will rejoice the eyes of many an adventurous Columbus. Like Alexander, we have conquered a world. The world of dead matter has opened its inmost recesses to our astonished gaze. Its great bodies we have measured by philosophy, its small bodies we have weighed by chemistry, but like Alexander we need not weep for new worlds to conquer, for the world of life yet challenges the conquest and mocks at all skill. Its simplest point, the germ life, taunts us with our ignorance. It bids us tell if we can, the caves in which life force lies hidden. It asks us whether vitality can increase its own sum total, or whether under ever-changing forms, there is just the same amount of germlife now as at creation.

We only know that each plant has a model before its architectual operations. From this model there are few departure, throughout the world. Our corn throws out its small rootlets in search of food, but it sternly refuses to produce tubers under ground as the potatoe so freely does. Some flowers have their home among the dry and rugged cliffs of the mountain, but others rejoice to bathe their petals in the clear, cold lake.

Where is the discoverer who shall unfold to us the working of that