THE POETRY OP CHEMISTRY. 
163 
No ! there is more wonder in truth than fable ; more 
poetry in fact than fiction. 
But there are revelations of this wonder-world of 
change more startling than these, and perhaps more truly 
poetic. The most obdurate and inflexible bodies seem 
destined by a law of their nature to work their way up 
through successive orders of being, till they reach the 
highest of them all; and when there, to fill a purpose 
essential to the very existence of man himself. Thus, 
without phosphorus, and sulphur, and potash, and lime, 
the human frame would be destitute of outline and 
power of locomotion, for with these materials its bones 
are formed; so also, without a supply of common salt, 
which is a compound of a brilliant metal and a poisonous 
gas, the alkaline character of the blood could not be 
maintained, and the frame would soon fall into corrup¬ 
tion, and perish ; and in like manner, without iron—the 
identical metal of which ploughshares and steam-engines 
are formed—life could not be sustained even for the 
shortest space of time; for, by the presence of the metal 
in the globules of the blood, that fluid maintains its 
brilliancy of colour, and is enabled to take up the vital¬ 
izing atoms of the air, and so continue the enjoyments 
of a happy existence. While still more wonderful, 
perhaps, are those discoveries by which Liebig has 
rendered himself immortal, and which reveal to us the 
chemical phenomena involved in the operations of the 
brain, and which indicate that the amount of phosphorus 
and nitrogenous principles, removed continually from 
the nervous system, are in direct proportion to the 
intensity and continuance of thought, and which 
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