Читать книгу A Modern Zoroastrian онлайн

21 страница из 38

The actual existence, therefore, of molecules and atoms is as well-ascertained a fact, as that of cwts. and lbs., or of planets and stars, of solar systems and nebulæ.

The researches of chemists have succeeded in discovering about 70 substances, of which the same may be said as of the oxygen and hydrogen into which water is decomposed, viz. that they cannot be decomposed by any known process, and must therefore be considered as ultimate and elementary. Their atoms differ widely in size and weight: that of mercury, for instance, being 200 times heavier than that of hydrogen, and the weights varying from 1 mc. for the hydrogen atom, up to 240 for that of uranium. When we call them elementary substances, we merely mean that we know no means of decomposing them. It is possible that all of them may be compounds which we cannot take to pieces of some substratum of uniform matter, and it is remarkable that the weight of nearly all of these elementary atoms is some simple multiple of that of hydrogen, pointing to their being all combinations of one common substratum of matter; but this is merely conjecture, and in the present state of our knowledge we must assume these 66 or 71 ultimate particles or atoms to be the indivisible units out of which all the complicated puzzle of the material universe is put together. They are not all equally important to us. Of the 71 elementary substances enumerated in chemical treatises, 5 are doubtful, and 30 to 35 of the remainder are either known only to chemists in minute quantities, or exist in nature in small quantities, having no very material bearing upon man’s relation to matter. The most important are oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon. Oxygen diluted by nitrogen gives us the air we breathe, combined with hydrogen the water we drink, and with metals and other primitive bases the solid earth on which we tread. Carbon again is the great basis of organised matter and life, to which it leads up by a variety of complex combinations with oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen.