910 CAUSE OF CHEMICAL ACTION 



the commencement of his work, represents it 

 as an immaterial agent, like light, electricity, 

 and magnetism. I am therefore less surprised 

 than I should otherwise have been, that at one 

 time he represents all vital action as proceeding 

 from the nervous system, at another time, from 

 chemical action,* again, from a peculiar force, 

 distinct from all the other powers of nature, and 

 fourthly, that he should observe in another place, 

 " we resemble the ignorant man, to whom the 

 motion of an iron piston rod in a cylinder, in 

 which the eye can detect no visible agent, and 



* But as he offers no explanation of the primary or ultimate 

 cause of chemical action, it is evident that he has no fulcrum on 

 which to place his lever, and that his whole system of hypotheses 

 resembles that of the Hindoo, who represented the world as sup- 

 ported by an elephant, and the elephant by an immense turtle. 

 For example, Liebig maintains that " all bodies in the act of 

 combination or decomposition, have the property of inducing those 

 processes, that " a molecule set in motion by any power, can 

 impart its own motion to another molecule with which it may be 

 in contact," that " the most general condition for the produc- 

 tion of eremacausis (a slow combustion) in organic matter, is con- 

 tact with a body in that state ; for the communication of combus- 

 tion is in reality the effect of contact," of which he offers many 

 illustrations that admit of a different and far more satisfactory ex- 

 planation. (See Vol. i. pp. 221, 237, 267, 70, 74, 373.) For 

 I have proved that caloric causes oxygen to unite with all the 

 other elements of ponderable matter, or with any of them separately, 

 without any previous contact with a body in the state of combus- 

 tion. It is therefore perfectly natural, as caloric is evolved during 

 every process of combustion, and as there could be no combination 

 or decomposition without it, that the contact of a burning body 

 should increase the chemical action of other bodies. 



