AP Success - AP English Language: The Poetry of Science

In contemplating works of nature, we cannot but regard, with feelings of religious admiration, the infinite variety of forms under which matter is presented to our senses. On every hand, the utmost diversity is exhibited; through all things we trace the most perfect order; and overall is diffused the charm of beauty. It is the uneducated or depraved alone, who find deformities in the creations by which we are surrounded. The three conditions of matter are, the solid, the fluid, and the aeriform; and these belong equally to the organic and inorganic world. In organic nature we have an almost infinite variety of animal form, presenting developments widely different from each other; yet in every case suited to the conditions required by the position which the creature occupies in the scale of being. Through the entire series, from the Polype to the higher order of animals, even to man, we find a uniformity in the progress towards perfection, and a continuity in the series, which betrays the great secret, that the mystery of life is the same in all—a pervading spiritual essence associated with matter, and modifying it by the master-mechanism of an Infinite mind. In the vegetable clothing of the surface of the earth, which fits it for the abode of man and animals—from the confervae1 of a stagnant pool, or the lichen of the windbeaten rock, to the lordly oak or towering palm—a singularly beautiful chain of being, and of gradual elevation in the scale of organization, presents itself to the contemplative mind. In the inorganic world, where the great phenomena of life are wanting, we have constantly exhibited the working of powers of a strangely complicated kind. The symmetrical arrangement of crystals—the diversified characters of mineral formations—the systematic aggregation of particles to form masses possessing properties of a peculiar and striking nature—all prove that agencies, which science with all its refinements has not detected, are unceasingly at work…. The naturalist searches the earth, the waters, and the air, for their living things; and the diversity of form, the variety of condition, and the perfection of organization which he discovers as belonging to this our epoch—differing from, indeed bearing but a slight relation to, those which mark the earth’s mutations—exhibit in a most striking view the endless variety of characters which matter can assume. We are so accustomed to all these phenomena of matter, that it is with some difficulty we can bend ourselves to the study of the more simple conditions in which it exists…. To nature alone belongs the mysterious power of transmutation. The enthusiastic alchemist, by the agency of physical power, dissipates a metal in vapour; but it remains a metal, and the same metal still. By the Hermetic art, he breaks up the combinations of masses; but he cannot alter the principles of any one of the elements which formed the mass upon which his skill is tried. Every atom is invested with properties peculiar to all of its class; and each one possesses powers, to which in mute obedience it is compelled, by which these properties are modified, and the character of matter varied. What are those properties? Do we know anything of those powers?