Polytechnic Association. 867 



Newton admitted the creation of primitive particles, extremely 

 minute, but permanent. Descartes, on the other hand, held with 

 Aristotle, Plato and Pythagoras, that the division of matter has no 

 assignable limit. Leibnitz attempted to reconcile the conflicting 

 opinions of metaphysicians and mathematicians, by supposing that 

 matter, in its ultimate condition, consists of unextended points which 

 lie denominated monads, a term borrowed from Pythagoras. At a 

 later day, Boscovich published his celebrated dynamic theory, in which 

 centers of force are substituted for monads. Neither of these inge- 

 nious theories, however, reaches the real points of perplexity. 



It is obvious that the science which treats of the ultimate compo- 

 sition of bodies would lead to more correct conceptions regarding 

 minute combinations of ponderable matter. Analysis has shown that 

 nearly all the bodies formed in the great laboratory of nature are 

 compounds. Thus far, sixty- three different kinds of matter have 

 resisted every effort to resolve them into simpler constituents. These 

 substances, distinguished as chemical elements, unite in exceedingly 

 minute quantities according to the well-known laws of Stoichiometry. 

 In the year 1789, Higgins, a professor in the University of Dublin, 

 advanced the idea that certain compounds are formed by the combi- 

 nation of ultimate particles or atoms of different elements. Dalton, 

 in 1803, independently arrived at a similar, conclusion, which he gene- 

 ralized, to explain the composition of all compounds, and made it the 

 basis of his " New System of Chemical Philosophy," published five 

 years later. The doctrine of Dalton has undergone, since his day, 

 such modifications as render it more acceptable ; but that part of it 

 which ascribes the union of indestructible atoms to chemical affinity 

 may be regarded as the first successful attempt to explain that primor- 

 dial action which the ancient atomists could not account for, and 

 which this Latin poet, above named, describes as irregular and fortu- 

 itous.* 



material world to consist of atoms, but yet to be ordered and governed by a Divine 

 providence. "Ex^'auro^ ex fiev rwv drdp.cov ffuvsazdvat row xofffidv, diuixeTffOa: de 

 a-v npovofaq. Eclog. Physic., lib. i., cap. xxv. And as evidence of the belief preva- 

 lent among wise men several centuries later, Berzelius, in his paper on Proportions 

 Determinate, quotes from Philo, who, in his collection of the choicest philosophical 

 ideas of his time (Libri Sapientise, cap. xi. v. 22), says: Ilavra 0ebq rJirpuj xa\ 

 ffrdOfut) oi'ra;; (" God made all things by measure, number and weight"). This 

 remarkable statement — ascribed to Solomon in the Apochrypha — as far as it relates to 

 things terrestrial, modern chemical investigations have fully confirmed. 

 * Omnimodis corre, atque omnia pertentare, 

 Qusecunquc inter se possint congressa creare. 



[L%cret., lib. v., ver. 191. 



