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A STUDY IN KARMA
normal pressure water boils at the necessary temperature for tea-making; you have lost pressure; supply the deficit ; imprison your escaping steam till it adds the necessary pressure, and you can make your tea with water at 100°. If you want to produce water by the union of hydrogen and oxygen, you require a certain temperature, and can obtain it from the electric spark. If you insist on keeping the temperature at zero, or in substituting nitrogen for hydrogen, you cannot have water. Nature lays down the conditions which result in the production of water, and you cannot change them ; she neither supplies nor withholds water; you are free to have it or to go without it; if you want it, you must bring together the necessary things and thus make the conditions. Without these, no water. With these, inevitably water. Are you bound or free ? Free as to making the conditions ; bound as to the result,
