The Queen of the Air - Being a Study of the Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm by John Ruskin
page 58 of 152 (38%)
page 58 of 152 (38%)
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natural science and mental phenomena, what, at least, remains to us after
science has done its worst; what the myth of Athena, as a formative and decisive power, a spirit of creation and volition, must eternally mean for all of us. 57. It is now (I believe I may use the strong word) "ascertained" that heat and motion are fixed in quantity, and measurable in the portions that we deal with. We can measure portions of power, as we can measure portions of space; while yet, as far as we know, space may be infinite, and force infinite. There may be heat as much greater than the sun's, as the sun's heat is greater than a candle's: and force as much greater than the force by which the world swings, as that is greater than the force by which a cobweb trembles. Now, on hear and force, life is inseparably dependent; and I believe, also, on a form of substance, which the philosophers call "protoplasm." I wish they would use English instead of Greek words. When I want to know why a leaf is green, they tell me it is colored by "chlorophyll," which at first sounds very instructive; but if they would only say plainly that a leaf is colored green by a thing which is called "green leaf," we should see more precisely how far we had got. However, it is a curious fact that life is connected with a cellular structure called protoplasm, or in English, "first stuck together;" whence, conceivably through deuteroplasms, or second stickings, and tritoplasms, or third stickings,* we reach the highest plastic phase in the human pottery, which differs from common chinaware, primarily, by a measurable degree of heat, developed in breathing, which it borrows from the rest of the universe while it lives, and which it as certainly returns to the rest of the universe, when it dies. 58. Again, with this heat certain assimilative powers are connected, which the tendency of recent discovery is to simplify more and more into |
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