sary for the work of ejection." "The first step towards the
acquisition of the proper instinct might have been mere unintentional
restlessness on the part of the young bird."--_Origin of Species_, p.
200.

[17] Pp. 135, f.

[18] P. 142.

[19] P. 143.

[20] P. 144.

[21] P. 232.

{68}

CHAPTER VII

LATER SCIENCE

The position, as we have described it, was that which may be said to
have existed up to about twenty years ago. Since then much new light
has come. Indeed, Lord Kelvin, speaking at Clerkenwell on February
26th, 1904, is reported in _The Times_ to have said, referring to the
extraordinary progress of scientific research, that it "had, perhaps,
been even more remarkable and striking at the beginning of the
twentieth century than during the whole of the nineteenth."

Let us take first that which he had more particularly in mind, the
advance in the knowledge of the constitution of Matter.

In an address delivered before the British Association at Bradford in
1873, Clerk Maxwell had stated the conclusions to which science had, up
to that time, been led in its investigations of matter. Throughout the
natural universe it had been shewn, by Spectrum Analysis, that matter
is built up of {69} molecules. These molecules, according to the most
competent judgment, were incapable of sub-division without change of
substance, and were absolutely fixed for each substance. "A molecule
of hydrogen, for example, whether in Sirius, or in Arcturus, executes
its vibrations in precisely the same time." The relations of the parts
and movements of the planetary systems may and do change, but "the
molecules--the foundation-stones of the natural universe--remain
unbroken and unworn."

As a result of this, it was maintained that "the exact equality of each
molecule to all others of the same kind gives it, as Sir John Herschel
has well said, the essential character of being a manufactured article,
and precludes the idea of its being eternal and self-existent." "Not
that science is debarred from studying the internal mechanism of a
molecule which she cannot take to pieces ... but, in tracing back the
history of matter, science is arrested when she assures herself, on the
one hand, that the molecule has been made, and on the other that it has
not been made by any of the processes we call natural."

So the case had stood for some while until science, through its
indefatigable inquirers, shewed that it was in ver