Well, by analyzing those ashes, you will obtain silicic
acid, aluminium, phosphate and carbonate of lime, carbonate of
magnesia, the sulphate and carbonate of potassium, and oxide of iron,
precisely as if the cress had grown in ordinary earth, beside a brook.
Now, those elements did not exist in the brimstone, a simple substance
which served for soil to the cress, nor in the distilled water with
which the plant was nourished, whose composition was known. But since
they are no more to be found in the seed itself, we can explain their
presence in the plant only by assuming the existence of a primary
element common to all the substances contained in the cress, and also
to all those by which we environed it. Thus the air, the distilled
water, the brimstone, and the various elements which analysis finds in
the cress, namely, potash, lime, magnesia, aluminium, etc., should
have one common principle floating in the atmosphere like light of the
sun.
"'From this unimpeachable experiment,' he cried, 'I deduce the
existence of the Alkahest, the Absolute,--a substance common to all
created things, differentiated by one primary force. Such is the net
meaning and position of the problem of the Absolute, which appears to
me to be solvable. In it we find the mysterious Ternary, before whose
shrine humanity has knelt from the dawn of ages,--the primary matter,
the medium, the product. We find that terrible number THREE in all
things human.
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