i879-1 
Matter Active. 
229 
Roger Bacon . — We spoke lately of the very ingenious 
speculation of making supposed matter from ether ; it 
agrees with the opinions of — let us say, for example — 
Albertus Magnus, who said, as the heading of this article 
denotes, that having taken away all the accidental forms we 
arrive at a substantial form, which being removed by the 
intellect there remains a something very occult, which is 
the first matter. 
John Dalton. — I know something of the search for th tprima 
materia , the something more than the elements, the fifth 
essence. Do you mean me to return to that mode of 
thinking from which, so happily as I think, Europe is 
freed ? 
Roger Bacon. — If our present atoms are compounds you 
must return so far as to seek for a substance out of which 
they were made, and I think that you are called on to do 
so intellectually even now, although I do not see a clear 
way of experimenting definitely. You have alluded to gra- 
vitation as presenting a mode of producing heat and setting 
all the phenomena of chemistry in motion, and certainly 
that power is wonderful. But if we were right before, then 
gravitation comes in after the atoms — molecules — are made. 
If the atoms were made from some other substance, we 
have no idea what that is, and cannot at any rate suppose 
it to gravitate ; if it did we should find it accumulated 
surely ; or if it could not be found by our usual observation 
it would be, to say the least, different from all our matter as 
we find it in the elements. We are therefore driven to a 
something which we cannot perceive, and which is not 
known to gravitate. If it does not gravitate it could not 
make these concussions to which you allude, and which 
produce heat. This matter, ether or otherwise, cannot 
therefore have made the suns by such means, and as a con- 
sequence the suns would not be the original source of the 
elements. This logic is not absolute, because we can sup- 
pose that some other power has brought the matter together ; 
that, however, takes us another step back. 
John Dalton. — You mean to say that you do not know 
anything to make atoms of, and you rush to a supposed 
something. I have them already made out of nothing at 
once. 
Roger Bacon . — The elements all differ among themselves, 
of course; but some are like others, and show a brotherhood 
distinctly, as if the children of the same parents. Then 
the atomic relations distinctly point to parts made up in 
some manner, as distinctly as any of the qualities of corr.- 
