sitions, and in accordance with their
arrangement they act upon the light. But what has built together the
molecules of the corn? Regarding crystalline architecture, I have
already said that you may, if you please, consider the atoms and
molecules to be placed in position by a Power external to themselves.
The same hypothesis is open to you now. But if in the case of
crystals you have rejected this notion of an external architect, I
think you are bound to reject it in the case of the grain, and to
conclude that the molecules of the corn, also, are posited by the
forces with which they act upon each other. It would be poor
philosophy to invoke an external agent in the one case, and to reject
it in the other.

Instead of cutting our grain of corn into slices and subjecting it to
the action of polarised light, let us place it in the earth, and
subject it to a certain degree of warmth. In other words, let the
molecules, both of the corn and of the surrounding earth, be kept in
that state of agitation which we call heat. Under these
circumstances, the grain and the substances which surround it
interact, and a definite molecular architecture is the result. A bud
is formed; this bud reaches the surface, where it is exposed to the
sun's rays, which are also to be regarded as a kind of vibratory
motion. And as the motion of common heat, with which the grain and
the substances surrounding it were first endowed, enabled the grain
and these substances to exercise their mutual attractions and
repulsions, and thus to coalesce in definite forms, so the specific
motion of the sun's rays now enables the green bud to feed upon the
carbonic acid and the aqueous vapour of the air. The bud appropriates
those constituents of both for which it has an elective attraction,
and permits the other constituent to return to the atmosphere. Thus
the architecture is carried on. Forces are active at the root, forces
are active in the blade, the matter of the air and the matter of the
atmosphere are drawn upon, and the plant augments in size. We have in
succession the stalk, the ear, the full corn in the ear; the cycle of
molecular action being completed by the production of grains, similar
to that with which the process began.

Now there is nothing in this process which necessarily eludes the
conceptive or imagining power of the human mind. An intellect the
same in kind as our own would, if only sufficiently expanded, be able
to follow