2 NATURE AND LIFE. 



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 abstractions are for 

 the moment, they are not, thank Heaven, so utterly aban- 

 doned as to deprive study of its ardor, and essays of their 

 success, when these relate to the problem of the constitu- 

 tion 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 insepa- 

 rable connection with, the abstract consideration of hidden 

 causes and of first principles. 



Matter is presented under a great variety of appear- 

 ances. Let us consider it in its most complicated state, in 

 the human body, for instance. In this, ordinary dissection 

 distinguishes organs, which may be resolved into tissues. 

 The disintegration of the latter yields anatomical elements 

 from which direct analysis extracts a certain number of 

 chemical principles. Here the anatomist's work ends. The 

 chemist steps in, and recognizes in these principles definite 

 kinds arising from the combination, in fixed and determi- 

 nate proportions, of a certain number of principles that can- 

 not be decomposed, substantially indestructible, to which 

 he gives the name of simple bodies. Carbon, nitrogen, 

 oxygen, hydrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, calcium, iron, which 

 thus set a limit to experimental analysis of the most com- 

 plex bodies, are simple substances, that is to say, they are 

 the original and irresolvable radicals of the tissue of things. 



