THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER. 547 



THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER. 



By FERNAND PAPILLON. 



TRANSLATED BY A. R. MACDONOUGH. 



WHATEVER empirics and utilitarians may say of them, there are 

 certainties apart from the experimental method, and there is 

 progress disconnected with brilliant or beneficent applications. The 

 mind of man may put forth its power in laboring in harmony with 

 reason, yet discover genuine truths in a sphere as far above that of 

 laboratories and manufactures as their sphere is above the region of 

 the coarsest arts. In a word, there is a temple of light that unfoMs 

 its portals to the soul neither through calculation nor through experi- 

 ment, which the soul nevertheless enters with authority and confi- 

 dence, so long as it holds the consciousness of its sovereign preroga- 

 tives. When will professed scientists, better informed of the close 

 connection between metaphysics and science, whence our modern 

 knowledge of Nature has sprung, better taught in the necessary laws 

 that govern the conflict of reason with the vast unknown, confess that 

 there are realities beyond those they attain ? When will science, in- 

 stead of the arrogant indifference it assumes in presence of philosophy, 

 admit the fertility beyond estimate of the latter ? It may be that the 

 hour of this reconciliation, so much to be longed for, is less remote 

 than many suppose ; at least, every day brings us nearer to it. The 

 spirit of Descartes cannot fail to arouse before long some genius 

 mighty enough to revive among us a taste and respect for thought in 

 all the departments of scientific activity. Deserted as high abstrac- 

 tions are for the moment, they are not, thank Heaven, so utterly 

 abandoned as to deprive study of its ardor, and essays of their success, 

 when these relate to the problem of the constitution of matter. In 

 fact, this is a question which for several years past has occupied some 

 among our own savants and thinkers, as completely as it has employed 

 most of those of the rest of Europe, a question which bears witness 

 with peculiar eloquence to this fact, that, if philosophers are forced to 

 borrow largely from science, in its turn science can retain clearness, 

 and elevation, and strength, only by drawing its inspiration from, and 

 recognizing its inseparable connection with, the abstract consideration 

 of hidden causes and of first principles. 



Matter is presented under a great variety of appearances. Let us 

 consider it in its most complicated state, in the human body, for in- 

 stance. In this, ordinary dissection distinguishes organs, which may 

 be resolved into tissues. The disintegration of the latter yields ana- 



