54 NATURE AND LIFE. 



not by weight or motion, but by the direct product of the 

 actual play of those forces. "The energy with which one 

 body combines with another body," says Wtirtz, " is inde- 

 pendent of the power it possesses to attract the latter. 

 The first is atomicity, the last is affinity." Atomicities are 

 capacities of action, powers of combination, immanent in 

 atoms, or rather consubstantial with them. Such is the 

 language at this day of the most authoritative chemists. 

 They contemplate in bodies elective virtues, tendencies to 

 saturation, appetencies which imply something prior and 

 subsequent to motion, something like that which in us 

 brings about action. Chemistry no longer dwells in ap- 

 pearances and sensible forms, in those brilliant shows 

 which delight or dazzle the senses ; it dwells in those mute 

 forces, in those acting monads, the substances of substance, 

 the matters of matter. Bodies are no longer characterized 

 by their outward and momentary physiognomy alone ; 

 they are also characterized by that which is most secret 

 within them, by the principle of their past and coming ex- 

 istence, by a spring which is as inwardly theirs as our soul 

 is ours. That in them which strikes our senses is merely 

 the veil of their real nature. Faraday and Dumas alike, 

 Berthelot and Wtirtz too, here find the whole in a dynamic 

 harmony. A distinguished English chemist, lately deceased, 

 Graham, the discoverer of dialysis, even went so far as to 

 conceive, under the name of ultimates, of certain principles 

 yet simpler than atoms, real points of substance, the essence 

 of which is determined by the kind of vibrations they are 

 subjected to, and in its turn determines the various natures 

 of bodies. Thus monads have become, in vital phenomena, 

 anatomical elements with their consubstantial attributes, 

 and, in chemic phenomena, atoms with their consubstantial 

 attributes. Greek atomism and Cartesian atomism formed 

 the conception of geometric and mechanical corpuscles; 

 Leibnitz formed the conception of the principles of appar- 



