198 CHEMICAL ATTRACTION. 



rated, -what hinders, what commands, and tv/iat 

 gives the motion." (Novum Organum.) 



This is the true foundation of the inductive 

 philosophy ; careful observation, rigid analysis, 

 the rejection of all hypotheses, and the undue 

 authority of distinguished names, must ultimately 

 lead to the discovery of all causes. It is doubt- 

 less an object of great practical importance to 

 know the proportions in which the elements of 

 ponderable matter unite to form water, alcohol, 

 aether, acids, alkalies, salts, rocks, &c. ; but it 

 is still more important to know what the agent is, 

 by which they are brought together and main- 

 tained in a state of intimate combination. 



It is already well known, that all chemical 

 action is resolvable into attraction and repulsion, 

 or combination and decomposition. I have also 

 shewn, that every particle of ponderable matter 

 is surrounded by an active, subtile and igneous 

 fluid, which in one proportion exerts a prodigious 

 force of attraction for them, and thus holds them 

 together ; while in larger proportions, it sepa- 

 rates them by a counteracting and idio-repulsive 

 force that every change in the dimensions, 

 powers, and aptitudes of different bodies, is at- 

 tended by an addition or subtraction of this 

 sethereal principle ; that all liquids, vapours, and 

 gases are solutions of ponderable matter in caloric, 

 with which they are intimately united by a 

 mutual affinity. 



