Take a bit of metal called zinc. It is heavy, subject
to gravitation, solid, subject to cohesion. But cause it to be burned,
to pass away, and be changed. To do this we use fire, not the ordinary
kind, but liquid that we keep in a bottle and call acid. The zinc is
burned up. What becomes of it? It becomes electricity. How changed!
It is no longer solid, but is a live fire that rings bells in our
houses, picks up our thought and pours it into the ear of a friend
miles away by the telephone, or thousands of miles away by the
telegraph. Burning up is only the means of a new and higher life. Ah,
delicate Ariel, tricksy sprite, the only way to get you is to burn up
the solid body.
The possibility of rare creation depends on rare material, on
spirit-like tenuity. And that is what the world goes into. There is a
substance called nitrite of amyl, known to many as a medicine for heart
disease. It is applied by inhaling its odor--a style of very much
rarefied application. Fill a tube with its vapor. It is invisible as
ordinary air in daylight. But pour a beam of direct sunlight from end
to end along its major axis. A dense cloud forms along the path of the
sunbeam; creation is going on. What the sun may do in the thinner
vapors the world goes into when burned up will be for us to find out
when we get there.
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