BUFFON AND DALTON. 165 



attraction, repulsion, and heat, to the agency of an 

 cether. Not being able to comprehend how one 

 and the same agent could produce such opposite 

 effects, Buffon maintained that the powers of 

 nature, which are known to us, may be reduced 

 to two : that which causes weight, and that which 

 causes heat, that to the power of attraction, 

 joined to the cause of heat, may be referred all 

 the phenomena of living and dead matter. Still 

 the cause of attraction remained unexplained. 

 Had Buffon advanced but one step further, he 

 would have resolved all the forces of nature into 

 one and the same cause. 



Since the discovery of latent heat by Dr. 

 Black, nearly all philosophers have viewed it as 

 the antagonist of that universal force by which 

 all things are held together. When treating of 

 liquids, Dr. Dalton observes, that they must be 

 considered as bodies under the control of two 

 most powerful agents, attraction and repulsion, 

 the last of which he refers to caloric. Sir H. 

 Davy also observes, that heat, or the power of 

 repulsion, may be considered as the antagonist 

 of cohesion ; the one tending to separate, and the 

 other to unite the particles of bodies. (Chemical 

 Philosophy, page 30.) Still the important ques- 

 tion recurs, what is the cause of attraction? 

 Newton says, it is an effect of some unknown 

 aethereal agent, and that it is the business of 

 philosophy to find it out. 



