496 THE MOUNTAIN. 



stinct of dissolution, having neither weight, form, nor any 

 quality, primary or secondary,* appreciable to the senses, 

 making iron fluid as water, and, with irresistible energy, me- 

 tamorphosing the granite into grass and ether. These agents 

 or invisible powers of existence have ever attracted the at- 

 tention of men, and invited to investigation, and theories of 

 the imponderables and of life have long been recorded. 

 The imponderables and vital powers are the true moving 

 forces, the real dynamic agents of existence. 



In the plastic fingers of these dread creatures all matter 

 reels and dances. Nature seems but a masquerade of these 

 miraculous wonder-working powers, now dreadful in the 

 thunder-storm, now beautiful in the gentle wind, now majes- 

 tic in the animal and tree, now magical and lovely in the 

 flower, insect, and bird, and without whose perpetual play 

 the organic world would soon become a reeking corpse. 

 How long shall it be before the atomic philosopher, with his 

 system of dead particles performing the pantomime of life 

 as fatal machinery, shall be superseded by a real philosophy 

 of the dynamics of the world ? The hour demands a rational 

 philosophy of the imponderables ; also a more searching and 

 critical recognition of the laws and action of the vital 

 forces. It likewise asks the true hygienic and therapeutic 

 powers of the imponderables, as of all influences that bear 

 upon the phenomena of life in health and disease. This 

 will surely come. Chemistry has, with a precision that 

 seems wonderful, told the story of the sixty ponderables, 

 and left a catalogue of elemental bodies and their laws of 

 relationship, or powers of combination, which promises, at 

 last, that, by vigilance and patience, absolute knowledge will 

 be attained, and nature reduced to a familiar laboratory. 

 That this is demonstrable, can easily be seen by comparing 

 the present precise and profound works on chemistry with 

 even the comparatively recent dreams of the alchemists and 

 the older chemists. The vitalist, or student of organized 



* Primary, extension and divisibility. Secondary, color, taste, 

 smell, etc. 



