Chapter 12 - Page 2

the quality of gases, can be rendered pure or
foul; is dependent on evaporation, being no more than ordinary
matter in a state of high rarefaction. Fire has no independent
existence, requires fuel for its support, and is evidently a
property that is derived from the combinations of other principles.
Thus, by putting two or more billets of wood together, by rapid
friction you produce fire. Abstract the air suddenly, and your fire
becomes extinct; abstract the wood, and you have the same result.
From these two experiments it is shown that fire has no independent
existence, and therefore is not an element. On the other hand, take
a billet of wood and let it be completely saturated with water; the
wood acquires a new property (as also by the application of fire,
which converts it into ashes and air), for its specific gravity is
increased, it becomes less inflammable, emits vapor more readily,
and yields less readily to the blow of the axe. Place the same
billet under a powerful screw, and a vessel beneath. Compress the
billet, and by a sufficient application of force, you will have the
wood, perfectly dry, left beneath the screw, and the vessel will
contain water. Thus is it shown that land (all vegetable matter
being no more than fungi of the earth) is a. primary element, and
that water is also a primary element; while air and fire are not.

"Having established the elements, I shall, for brevity's sake,
suppose the world created. In the beginning, the orb was placed in
vacuum, stationary, and with its axis perpendicular to the plane of
what is now called its orbit. Its only revolution was the diurnal."

"And the changes of the seasons?"

"Had not yet taken place. The days and nights were equal; there were
no eclipses; the same stars were always visible. This state of the
earth is supposed, from certain geological proofs, to have continued
about a thousand years, during which time the struggle between mind
and matter was solely confined to quadrupeds. Man is thought to have
made his appearance, so far as our documents go to establish the
fact, about the year of the world one thousand and three. About this
period, too, it is supposed that fire was generated by the friction
of the earth's axis, while making the diurnal movement; or, as some
imagine, by the friction of the periphery of the orb, rubbing
against vacuum at the rate of so many miles in a minute. The fire
penetrating the crust, soon got access to the bodies of water that
fill the cavities of the earth. From this time is to be dated the
existence of a new and most important agent in the terrestrial
phenomena, called steam. Vegetation now began to appear, as the
earth received warmth from within--"