12 BORDER LINES OF KNOWLEDGE 



looked upon as one of those freaks of fancy to wliicli 

 philosophers, like other men, are subject. But when 

 Professor Faraday, in 1851, says, at a meeting of the 

 British Association, that " his hopes are in the direc- 

 tion of proving that bodies called simple were really 

 compounds, and may be formed artificially as soon as 

 we are masters of the laws influencing their combina- 

 tions," — when he comes forward and says that he has 

 tried experiments at transmutation, and means, if his 

 life is spared, to try them again, — how can we be sur- 

 prised at the popular story of 1861, that Louis Napo- 

 leon has established a gold-factory and is glutting the 

 mints of Europe with bullion of his own making ? 



And so with reference to the law of combinations. 

 The old maxim was, Corpora non agunt nisi soluta. If 

 two substances, a and h, are enclosed in a glass vessel, c, 

 we do not expect the glass to change them, unless a 

 or h or the compound a h has the power of dissolving 

 the glass. But if for a I take oxygen, for h hydrogen, 

 and for c a piece of spongy platinum, I find the first 

 two combine with the common signs of combustion 

 and form water, the third in the mean time under- 

 going no perceptible change. It has played the part 

 of the unwedded priest, who marries a pair without 

 taking a fee or having any further relation with the 

 parties. We call this catalysis^ catalytic action, the ac- 

 tion of presence, or by what learned name we choose. 

 Give what name to it we will, it is a manifestation of 

 power which crosses our estabhshed laws of combina- 



