THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER. 17 



from the action of any force, and turns it about. The oil 

 takes the form of a sphere, and, as soon as the rotation 

 grows very rapid, breaks up, and parts into a number of 

 smaller spheres. The celestial spheres were probably 

 formed in the same way, and an exactly similar mechanical 

 action produces those clear dew-drops, glittering like dia- 

 monds, on the leaves of plants. 



All physical phenomena, whatever their nature, are at 

 bottom only manifestations of one and the same primordial 

 agent. We can no longer question this general conclusion 

 of all modern discoveries, S6narmont explicitly says, though 

 it is,'as yet, impossible to formulate with precision its laws 

 and its particular conditions. If this be true, and we hope 

 we have proved it to be so, it is plain that those con- 

 ditional particularities of which Se'narmont speaks, that is 

 to say, those diversified manifestations of the sole agent 

 to which he alludes, can depend only on differences in the 

 motions which impel it. Now, the very existence of these 

 differences necessarily implies a coordinating and regulat- 

 ing intelligence ; but how much more extreme is the ne- 

 cessity for such a cause in chemical phenomena, which dis- 

 play such endless complications issuing from that primal 

 energy to which every thing in the last analysis is reduced ! 

 We have seen that* the variety of those stable and homo- 

 geneous energies known under the name of simple bodies, 

 the number of which is now increased to sixty, depends on 

 the variety of the vibrations that each one of these little 

 worlds performs. This is the earliest intervention of a 

 principle of difference. This principle does not merely de- 

 termine the multiplication of simple bodies ; it also acts in 

 any one element with such intensity that the same element 

 can acquire very unlike properties and attributes. What 

 things are more heterogeneous than the diamond and char- 

 coal, or than common phosphorus and amorphous phos- 

 phorus ? Yet charcoal and diamond are chemically identi- 

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