JOURNAL 
OF 
THE ASIATIC SOCIETY. 
No. 21.—September, 1833. 
I.—An Inquiry into the Laws governing the two great powers, Attraction 
and Repulsion, as operating on the Aggregation and Combination of 
Atoms. By Julius Jeffreys, Esq. 
TuoveHu the causes of the three states of matter, as they are called, 
that is to say, the solid, the liquid, and the aeriform, together with 
those causes by which the union of the different kinds of matter in 
compound bodies is effected, and those also by which bodies are ex- 
panded, contracted, or preserved of the same magnitude are subjects of 
great curiosity and importance, yet they belong to a branch of Che- 
mistry which is at present in an unadvanced and imperfect state. 
* Those justly celebrated philosophers who have done honor to our age 
by their discoveries in other branches have not yet carried their ex- 
amination so far into this part as to arrive at any settled opinions 
concerning it, and not unfrequently in the same author doctrines have 
been advanced which are irreconcilable with each other. 
The branch of natural philosophy to which the present inquiry 
is devoted having continued, with little advance, since it was written, 
in the year 1822, the doctrines I have endeavoured to establish, and 
the body of arguments by which they are supported, maintain still 
whatever of novelty or importance they may have possessed. As, 
however, in so considerable a period, a few of the arguments may 
have been brought forward by others, though not perhaps similarly 
applied, I have thought it proper to mark by including brackets, thus 
[J], such parts as have undergone any alteration upon a revision. 
The body of the work remains verbatim as when first written. 
Whether by directing my attention to this part of Chemistry I have 
been enabled to suggest any such modes of reasoning as may be applied 
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