PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE—LEIBNITZ’S IDEAS. 53 
radiating thence by its peculiar virtue into the infinity of 
things, the human soul is like Milton’s lion, half lion and 
half mud, and still struggling, under the moulding hand of 
the divine sculptor, to get free from chaos. Half spirit, 
half matter, our soul aspires to absolute purity: it is 
checked and fettered by the bonds of the body. The great 
mystery is to know how it releases itself from them when 
passing into eternity. 
Leibnitz did not merely distinguish those virtues which 
he called substantial forms, or souls, and which are the 
properties of corpuscles endowed with life, such as we now 
know them; he drew a further distinction, in these corpus- 
cles and in all bodies generally, between mass and matter. 
Now what he termed mass is the grouping of our geo- 
metric and mechanical properties, and matter is the asso- 
ciation of our physico-chemical properties. Mass and matter 
belong to all bodies, soul does not belong to all. Yet it is 
perhaps allowable to regard as a quasi-vital thing that 
tendency of inorganic molecules to form regular groups in 
crystallization, and even that more general property they 
possess of always combining in definite proportions, assum- 
ing figures of the generating law of which chemistry is 
beginning to gain a glimpse. At all events, whatever may 
be the principles of those inward motions, of those har- 
monious struggles that have their seat in the inmost depths 
of substance, chemistry in our days is a copy of Leibnitz’s 
thought in all its parts. In fact, it reduces those compli- 
cated phenomena that are the object of its study to simple 
elements known under the name of atoms, and haying 
nothing but the name in common with those of Leucippus 
and of Descartes. Pure idealities, and yet the principles 
of all that is real, these atoms are distinguished and classi- 
fied by functions that are absolutely dynamic. Chemistry 
proves the action in those atoms of primitive forces, which 
it designates by the term atomicities, and which it measures 
