PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE LEIBNITZ'S IDEAS. 53 



radiating thence by its peculiar virtue into the infinity of 

 things, the human soul is like Milton's lion, half lion and 

 half mud, and still struggling, under the moulding hand of 

 the divine sculptor, to get free from chaos. Half spirit, 

 half matter, our soul aspires to absolute purity: it is 

 checked and fettered by the bonds of the body. The great 

 mystery is to know how it releases itself from them when 

 passing into eternity. 



Leibnitz did not merely distinguish those virtues which 

 he called substantial forms, or souls, and which are the 

 properties of corpuscles endowed with life, such as we now 

 know them ; he drew a further distinction, in these corpus- 

 cles and in all bodies generally, between mass and matter. 

 Now what he termed mass is the grouping of our geo- 

 metric and mechanical properties, and matter is the asso- 

 ciation of our physico-chemical properties. Mass and matter 

 belong to all bodies, soul does not belong to all. Yet it is 

 perhaps allowable to regard as a quasi-vital thing that 

 tendency of inorganic molecules to form regular groups in 

 crystallization, and even that more general property they 

 possess of always combining in definite proportions, assum- 

 ing figures of the generating law of which chemistry is 

 beginning to gain a glimpse. At all events, whatever may 

 be the principles of those inward motions, of those har- 

 monious struggles that have their seat in the inmost depths 

 of substance, chemistry in our days is a copy of Leibnitz's 

 thought in all its parts. In fact, it reduces those compli- 

 cated phenomena that are the object of its study to simple 

 elements known under the name of atoms, and having 

 nothing but the name in common with those of Leucippus 

 and of Descartes. Pure idealities, and yet the principles 

 of all that is real, these atoms are distinguished and classi- 

 fied by functions that are absolutely dynamic. Chemistry 

 proves the action in those atoms of primitive forces, which 

 it designates by the term atomicities, and which it measures 



