136 On the Atomic Philosophy. 
The first column expresses the number of coats; the second 
column, the number of atoms of the matter of heat in each coat; 
the fifth column expresses their sum; viz. of the first coat, of 
the first and second; of the first, second and third, &c. The other 
columns show how the table may be extended to any definite 
length. 
I will leave Mr. Dalton to take the seventh 1680, or the 
eighth 2448, which he pleases; one is 305 too little, the other 
463too much. He may be surprised that he cannot find the num- 
ber 1985 in the table : this number is a multiple of 5, the num- 
bers in the atomical table are multiples of 12: this hypothesis 
ought to lead to the conclusion that water would unite to the 
matter of heat in every proportion found in the fifth column of 
the table, 1 to 12, 1 to 60, to 168, to every number in the table, 
even to infinity: but this inquiry naturally leads to one of two 
results; either the atomical philosophers do not follow nature, or 
nature does not follow the ingenious couceits of the atomical 
philosophers. I will not attempt to run through all the vagaries 
of the system, but will only state that atoms are described as 
solid, hard, and impenetrable; that water consists of the matter 
of oxygen, of the matter of hydrogen, and of the matter of heat. 
It is in vain to say that the matter of heat is only an atmosphere 
to the other two: if one species of matter consists of atoms, so 
must all; and how can it be possible for one atom to get into the 
inside of another? If Nature had employed the mechanical phi- 
losophers as her journeymen, all gaseous atoms, instead of being 
globular, would be double hexagonal pyramids. Nature’s laws are 
too simple for the inventive genius of a mechanical philosopher : 
the chemical combinations in definite proportions, as explained 
by Sir H, Davy, are clear, intelligible and satisfactory; while the 
day dreams of the atomic philosophers are clouds that sully the 
philosophic horizon, which will soon be dispersed and seen no 
more. 
The views which I have developed in my Essay on this subject 
are very extensive, and will unfold the arcana of nature in a way 
that I believe has never yet been considered. I have divided all 
matter which fills all space, into ponderable and imponderable : 
imponderable matter is the only ethereal substance; it is the same 
with caloric, matter of heat, specific heat; fire, or light and heat, 
the electric fluid, the element of fluidity, and which I have called 
jruidium. Instead of being the great repulsive power, it is the 
operating cause of all chemical attractions, all chemical action : 
it unites and is united with all ponderable matter, of which it is 
the life and soul ; for without the aid of fluidium, all ponderable 
matter would be inert and dead. The way in which the sun acts 
in 
