Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-11-25

today. Dazzled, half frightened by
its own visions, it dares hardly hint
~ at what it sees.
The fairy story of radium, the
miracle of wireless communication across
half a planet, the witchcraft of the X-ray,
are only sober rest houses on a road that
reaches beyond into a wonderful domain
where the supernatural is the natural ana
rapt prophecy pales before demonstrates
fact.
Chemist and biologist naturalist and cleo
tricfan see things hitherto undreamed. %
destructive of all our old knoWleoge are
some of these. so vast In their promises
that the boldest seekers do not venture
more than to hint at their visions in even
their own technical papers that never reach
the layman and would be unlnteiilslole ~
him IL they did.
They Veil their limited prophecies behind
half jocular words. They essay guar
theories with ifs and ands But they are
too full of 1t to remain wholly silent anu
today the layman who Is fortihed win dc-
curate knowledge of the higher natural
sciences finds that the matter of fact eau
tious deductions of the dry technical re-
port take him on flights into more WONDER
full worlds than ever were conceived py
Jules Verne.
Most fascinating OF all Is, of course, the
riddle of how life began. How and Whcre
in what hell of chaos did the first spark OF
this vague. still incomprehenslble tnlhs
Immedia tely in striving to bark pack 10
that all but unimaginable past. the NINA
of the ordinary man conjures planet
whirling redhot through space. Surely In
that whitening fire, hotter than any oeat
that science can produce today. life couio
not have existed.
But says the new science, we do not
know what life is We do know that there
are bacili today that can pass through
heat and cold fierce that 1t can De eX
pressed only in figures that mean nothlhs
to the mind. Furthermore, heat means
life. itself Could the earth have been red
hot If the vital principle had not perme-
ated II even then?
This Is a far step beyond the helpless
theory of the evolutionists of only five years
ago, who were willing to toy with the
theory that the world was dead planet
after its fire baptism, and that the vital
principle came down to 1t from another ce-
lestial body-perhaps in chance fragment
of meteoric ore; the first germ hurried
through space unreasonable and tossed by
chance by this thing that is now our world
The scientific seers today look in magma
tion on world that was all molten mass,
and whirling, fearful sun, among count
less other consultations, in their throes OF
birth. Then they the great globe cool
and blacken. slowly. slowly, through mil
lions of slow, patient years, till 1t revolVes
In orderly harmony with the rest. But now
peaks there crawls nothing, there Is not
motion Of infnitesimal limb, not minute
speck that has volition, not a knowing
breath In all that fearful expanse that
looks less like world than gate to ever
lasting death.
Everywhere is rock-back, hopeless, dead
rock. Or Is 1t life?
Yes! says the new science Rock is crys
talliza ton and crystallization is life.
This thing. Capitalization, men have
known ever since men began to think. The
old Chaldeans knew 1t. Man used his
knowledge of ii in the stone age. Thus and
so would the form of crystallZation permit
him to split his lints, Thus and so might
he shape his maui.
And nova new belief about this old
rock for uncounted years and never per-
ceived that 1t was alive. as truly living as
worm or bird man himself.
Capitalization, we are to learn now, is
not q mere mechanical grouping of dead
atoms. 1t is birth
Only at first sight does this theory seem
wild. On second thought even the un-
scientific mind will see suddenly it is far
wilder to believe, as everybody has believed
so long. that it was purely mechanical
process that made the crystals of salt form
themselves so and the crystals of granite
form themselves thus. How could there be
a purely mechanical original cause? What
could have set 1t in motion?
What is this thing. a crystal?
meteorological, geological and chemical
science have all given learned definitions
for 1t; but in effect crystals are recognized
only by their appearance.
Now. in recent years. in It's hunt for the