n must be equally fatal; for instance, the power of repulsion.

A conviction of this truth has given rise to a constant effort to
simplify matters down to the level of our ignorance, by reducing all
substances to one, or at most two simple elements, and all forces to the
form of one universal law; but the progress of science utterly blasts
the attempt. Instead of simplifying matters, the very chemical processes
undertaken with that view revealed new substances, and every year
increases our knowledge of nature's variety. No scientific man now
dreams of one primeval element. In the same way, astronomy, which, it
was boasted, would enable us to account for all the operations of the
universe, by reducing all motion to one mechanical law, has revealed to
us the existence of other forces as far reaching as the attraction of
gravitation, and more powerful; and substances whose nature and
combinations are utterly unknown. But every cosmogony is just an attempt
to simplify matters, by ignoring the existence of these unknown
substances, and mysterious forces; a process which science condemns, as
utterly unphilosophical and absurd.

Astronomy has shown us _our ignorance of the substances_, or
_materials_, _of our own little globe_. It has demonstrated that the
whole body of the earth must have an average density equal to iron. As
the rocks near the surface are much lighter, those toward the center
must be heavier than iron, to make up this density. Of what, then, do
they consist? The geologist says he does not know. No geologist ever saw
them. No mortal ever will see them, and report their chemical
constitution, their dip, and the arrangement of their strata, to the
American Association for the Advancement of Science. The very utmost "we
can say is that they are unlike anything with which we are acquainted."
Very well; then be pleased to have the decency to abstain from telling
us how the world was made, when you don't know what it is made of.

The sun's heat, at its surface, is 300,000 times greater than at the
surface of the earth, but a tenth of this amount, collected in the focus
of a lens, dissipates gold and platinum in vapor. When the most vivid
flames which we can produce are held up in the blaze of his rays, they
disappear. If a cataract of icebergs, a mile high, and wider than the
Atlantic Ocean, were launched into the sun with the velocity of a
cannon-ball, the small portion of the sun's heat expended on our earth
wou