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It is as if oxygen were never found alone, but only in connection with hydrogen, carbon, or some other of the eighty elements which compose our globe. We might feel its wide influence, but we should have difficulty in describing what the thing itself was.
At 32° Fahrenheit, and far below that temperature, oxygen and hydrogen are elastic gaseous bodies, whose particles tend to rush away from one another with great force. Water, at the same temperature, is a strong though brittle solid, whose particles tend to cohere into definite geometrical shapes, and sometimes build up frosty imitations of the most complex forms of vegetable foliage.
Now, one of the reasons of the lassitude felt in warm climates is, that the air expanding with the heat, while the lungs remain of the same capacity, they must take in a smaller quantity by weight, though the same by measure, of oxygen, the supporter of life; but if, in addition to the air being rarefied, it be also still further distended by the vapour of water being mixed with it, it is evident that a certain number of cubic inches by measure, or the lungs full, will contain a less weight of oxygen than ever; so little, indeed, that life can barely be supported; and we need not wonder at persons lying down almost powerless in the hot and damp atmosphere, and gasping for breath.
There is every reason to believe that at an extreme heat the elements cannot combine. Even under such heat as can be artificially produced, some very strong affinities yield, as for instance, that of oxygen for hydrogen; and the great majority of chemical compounds are decomposed at much lower temperatures.
Exactly as much oxygen as is imbibed in inspiration passes off in expiration, in the form of carbonic acid and water; so that with every breath the amount of carbon and hydrogen in the body is diminished.
The fermentative character of this yeast nevertheless, continues, and produces even increased effects, if it is made to act on sugar apart from the influence of free oxygen. "It seems, therefore, natural to admit that when yeast functions as a ferment by living apart from the influence of air, it derives oxygen from the sugar, and that this is the origin of its fermentative character.
*Why Oxygen and Food are Both Necessary.*—The necessity for introducing both oxygen and food into the body for the purpose of supplying energy is now apparent. The energy which is used in the body is not the energy of food alone. Nor is it the energy of oxygen alone. It belongs to both. It is due to their attraction for each other and their condition of separation.
The ants fought blindly with one another to reach the surface to live. That was the law of life as he saw it to fight one's way to the open. The world he looked upon breathed in money through eager nostrils. Money was the oxygen of civilization. Without money a man slowly asphyxiated.
"Science can tell us that oxygen and hydrogen will unite under certain conditions to produce water, but it cannot tell us why they do so; the mystery of their affinity is as dark as ever." Mr. Le Gallienne has a whole chapter on the Relative Spirit, yet his "long and ardent thought" does not enable him to see that he is himself a slave of metaphysics.
They have enabled me to rectify some erroneous notions I formerly entertained. If, for example, I were to ask you what air consists of? you would, no doubt, reply that is a compound body made of oxygen and hydrogen or azote, in the proportion of twenty-one of the one to seventy-nine of the other." "Yes, most undoubtedly."
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