M. Dumas on the Constitution of Milk and Blood. 129 



Here Faraday proclaims himself at once a Leibnitzian and 

 idealist. No answer, so far as I am aware, has ever been made to 

 his argument; nor did he, in the exuberant development of 

 atomic suggestions which surrounded his later years, publish any 

 retractation of his previous opinion. Therefore, that matter is 

 force, in some way determined, was probably that great thinker's 

 final belief. 



Such being the condition of the atomic theory, whether re- 

 garded in its chemical or philosophical aspect, certain practical 

 results follow. I shall not take into consideration the physical 

 molecules, which are " invested with an arbitrary system of cen- 

 tral forces invented expressly to account for the observed pheno- 

 mena," and are hard — nor the new alternative of ring-vortices, 

 which are not hard*. A logical mind, still free to make an 

 effort, cannot be content to accept that theory without question, 

 or to entertain it without suspicion. And on inquiry it will 

 find, if my argument be sound, that the atomic theory has no 

 experimental basis, is untrue to nature generally, and consists 

 in the main of a materialistic fallacy, derived from appetite more 

 than from judgment; while, on the other side, arises the Idea 

 of Motion, with its subordinate laws, true both to nature and 

 the life of man, the highest product of the scientific and the 

 pure reason, and the noblest generalization the world has yet 

 known, because it is the only one that neither limits nor enslaves. 

 So serious is your crisis, so momentous your decision. 



12 Pemberton Terrace, 

 St. John's Park, N. 



XVI. On the Constitution of Milk and Blood. 

 By M. Dumas f. 



DURING the most troubled years of the first French revo- 

 lution, the old Academy of Sciences of Paris having 

 been suppressed, its members none the less continued their 

 patriotic cooperation in the labours required by the new neces- 

 sities of the country. History has given them credit for this. 

 It associates the names of the principal of them with those of 

 the illustrious administrators and generals, who then caused 

 the integrity of the French soil to be respected. 



The editors of the Annates de Chimie, who had been com- 

 pelled to suspend their publication under the reign of Terror, 

 on resuming it had the happy thought of collecting, in two 

 volumes, all the memoirs or reports with which the Academi- 

 cians had been charged. In running through these we appre- 



* British Association Report for 1870 : Transactions of Sections, p. 6. 

 t Translated by W. S. Dallas, F.L.S., from the Bibliotheque Universelle, 

 15 June 1871, Archives des Sciences, pp. 105-119. 



Phil. Mag. S. 4. Vol. 42. No. 278. Aug. 1871. K 



