ON CHEMISTRY. 
421 
ble. We have the Sun, the grand first principle, and we have 
enough. Humility instructs us to be grateful, and as Lord Bacon 
would have said, to add “ the superlative cf praise—admiration 
while we each aspire, “What I know not—teach thou me.” 
Light pervades, imbues, influences all things, this is the truth of 
truth. We do not perceive it in a drop of water ; yet water con¬ 
tains all the elements of tremendous combustion. This phenomenon 
is within the detection of the chemist’s art. Flint does not manifest 
light; yet who will doubt its excitability ? Hydrogen gas, the light¬ 
est of all vapor, is invisible ; but let a stream of it be projected through 
an aperture not wider than the puncture of a pin, upon an atom of 
spongy platina, the cold metal will instantly be heated to redness, 
and the exciting gas inflamed. A piece of glass, and a small square 
of black silk, are both inert, and cold bodies; yet sparks of ethe- 
rial fire will be elicited by the friction of the two. A lump of white 
sugar rubbed up with a small portion of chlorate of potass, is a mild 
and innocent powder; or if it be blended with a little mucilage and 
attached to one end of a match, it will remain silent for any length 
of time; but apply the minutest drop of sulphuric acid to either, 
and the mass will burst out into vivid flame. Vegetables are inert, 
they hbey the sun, they drink his beams ; colour is imparted to their 
foliage, and flower. They decay and wither, and then will, by the 
application of flame, yield to rapid combustion, and produce matters, 
the existence of which, could no more be expected, than was the 
light which blazed from their substance. 
Heat may be excited without the revealment of flame, and here is 
the grand rallying point of the partizans of latent caloric, but heat, 
like all the other phenomena, is but a manifestation of chemical action. 
1 am willing enough to cede the point, that heat becomes revealed, oc¬ 
casionally, without light, and so far to allow the latent existence of 
its cause. I only object to the theory which claims the latency of heat 
as of a material substance sui generis ; I seek for a cause and source, 
and find both in solar light: herein is the reality ! The minutiae, 
the revealments of all the great natural agents,—electric light, heat 
magnetism, attraction and repulsion, I conceive to be dependant 
upon the energy of the one great principle, exerted under peculiar 
circumstances. Philosophers, I trust, are advancing on the road of 
individual discovery, and they who possess wealth, time, and a refined 
apparatus may employ them to the greatest advantage. What Davy 
did, what Faraday is doing, may be but. the forerunners of a day of 
splendour: in the mean time, the Hypothesis I advocate has truth 
as its base, though I feel utterly powerless in attempting even to think 
of the tremendous processes which it involves. 
