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, Sénarmont 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 Sénarmont 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 codrdinating 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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