444 
DR 4 PROUT ON CHEMISTRY. 
vesting it with new ones, and thus of radically changing or sub¬ 
verting the laws of common chemical action : I shall endeavour, 
before we proceed, to illustrate it a little further. 
Let us take a mass of sugar, as a familiar example of a sub¬ 
stance formed by an organic principle, and which, probably, will 
never be formed by any other agency. Sugar has been ascer¬ 
tained, and is generally admitted, to be composed of three ele¬ 
ments—hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen, combined together in 
certain proportions. Now what power, I ask, is it, which, at 
this moment, keeps the particles of the three elements composing 
this sugar together in its present state? Will any one contend 
that it is the organic principle of the plant in which it was formed, 
perhaps, many years ago ? Would not this supposition be as un¬ 
necessary as absurd ? for do we not know that the elementary 
particles of all bodies, or at least of those which form sugar, 
possess a natural and inherent affinity for one another—the 
hydrogen, for example, with the carbon, or with oxygen,or both? 
And are not these natural affinities among its component particles 
quite sufficient to account for, at least, its present existence ? If 
this supposition be admitted, must we not be likewise compelled 
to admit, that this sugar has always , from the moment of its first 
formation in the cane, existed, in virtue of the same natural affi¬ 
nity among its particles? And, to push the argument still 
further, must we not suppose, in this case, that, even at the 
moment of its formation, the organic principle of the plant, if it 
exerted any, must have exerted powers absolutely identical with 
those which now keep its particles together. 
We have reduced the argument, then, to this state: in the im¬ 
mediate formation of sugar, either the organic principle did not 
impart any new power whatever to the particles of which it is 
composed, and causing them to combine together, or it imparted 
to them a power absolutely identical with those they already pos¬ 
sessed, and which naturally belonged to them. Now the latter 
alternative is directly at variance with that principle of logic 
which forbids the assumption of two causes for the production of 
an effect, when one cause already exists which has been proved, 
or is known, to be sufficient for that purpose. The conclusion, 
. then, from the whole argument, is, that the organic principle of 
the plant does not at this moment, nor has not at any time, even 
at the moment of its formation, acted as the cause which keeps 
the elements of sugar in their present state of union ; but that 
they first combined, and still remain in union, in virtue of the 
natural and inherent affinities existing among the particles of 
which it is composed; and the same argument, with some modi¬ 
fications, may be extended to all organic compounds. 
