We are getting used to this sort of work already.  When we reduce common air in a bulb to one one-thousandth of its normal density at the sea we get the possibility of continuous incandescent electric light by the vibration of platinum wire.  When we reduce it to a tenuity of one millionth of the normal density we get the possibility of the X rays by vibrations of itself without any platinum wire.  The greater the tenuity the greater the creative results.  For example, water in freezing exerts an expansive, thrusting force of thirty thousand pounds to the square inch, over two thousand tons to the square foot; an incomprehensible force, but applicable in nature to little besides splitting rocks.  On the other hand, when water is rarefied into steam its power is vastly more versatile, tractable, and serviceable in a thousand ways.  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.  Standing on Popocatepetl we have seen a sea of clouds below, white as the light of transfiguration, tossed into waves a mile high by the touch of the sunbeam.  Creative ordering was observed in actual process.  It is done under our eyes to show us how easy it is.  Would it be any less glorious if there were no Popocatepetl?  A thrush among vines outside is just now showing us how easy it is to create an ecstasy of music out of silence.  She has only to open her mouth and the innate aptitudes of air rush in to actualize her creative wish.  Not only is it easy for the bird, but she is even provoked to this love and good works by the creation of a rainbow on the retreating blackness of a storm yonder.  Thunder is the sub-bass nature furnishes her, and thus invites her to add the complementary notes.