THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER. 557 



manifestations of one and the same primordial agent. We can no 

 longer question this general conclusion of all modern discoveries, 

 Senarmont explicitly says, though it is, as yet, impossible to formu- 

 late with precision its laws and its particular conditions. If this he 

 true, and we hope we have proved it to be so, it is plain that those 

 conditional particularities of which Senarmont speaks, that is to say, 

 those diversified manifestations of the sole agent to which he alludes, 

 can depend only on differences m the motions which impel it. Now, 

 the very existence of these differences necessarily implies a coordi- 

 nating and regulating intelligence ; but how much more extreme is 

 the necessity for such a cause in chemical phenomena, which display 

 such endless complications issuing from that primal energy to which 

 every thing in the last analysis is reduced ! We have seen that the 

 variety of those stable and homogeneous energies known under the 

 name of simple bodies, the number of which is now increased to sixty, 

 depends on the variety of the vibrations that each one of these little 

 worlds performs. This is the earliest intervention of a principle of dif- 

 ference. This principle does not merely determine the multiplication 

 of simple bodies ; it also acts in any one element with such intensity 

 that the same element can acquire very unlike properties and attri- 

 butes. What things are more heterogeneous than the diamond and 

 charcoal, or than common phosphorus and amorphous phosphorus? 

 Yet charcoal and diamond are chemically identical, just as the two 

 sorts of phosphorus are. These cases of isomery, which are quite 

 numerous, attest with the strongest evidence the excessive variability 

 of which combinations of force are capable. When we see the same 

 elements, combined in the same weight-proportions, produce sometimes 

 harmless substances, sometimes terrible poisons, in one case evolve 

 colorless or dingy products, in another brilliant hues, we become con- 

 vinced that primal matter is of little consequence in comparison with 

 the weaver who arranges its threads, and knows beforehand what the 

 aspect of the web will be. Besides, it is not alone in the whole that 

 the formative principle is displayed ; it shows forth also in the ele- 

 ments, considered individually, since every one of them exhibits ten- 

 dencies, elective affinities, that bear witness to some obscure instinct 

 toward harmonious completion. 



There is not only a prodigious variety in the disposition of the 

 atoms which make up molecules, and in the arrangement of the mole- 

 cules among themselves, but this arrangement is governed, besides, 

 by admirable geometric laws. The atoms that make up molecules are 

 not heaped and flung together at random and in disorder ; they enter 

 into composition only in fixed proportions and in fixed directions. 

 Marc-Antoine Gauclin has proved, in a late treatise devoted entirely 

 to these refined inquiries, the existence of some of the most important 

 laws in the geometry of atoms. .This ingenious and persevering writer 

 demonstrates that all chemical molecules, whether they are fitted to 



