It governs religions, sciences, and laws.
"'It was at this point,' he went on, 'that poverty put an end to my
researches. You were the pupil of Lavoisier, you are rich, and master
of your own time, I will therefore tell you my conjectures. Listen to
the conclusions my personal experiments have led me to foresee. The
PRIME MATTER must be the common principle in the three gases and in
carbon. The MEDIUM must be the principle common to negative and
positive electricity. Proceed to the discovery of the proofs that will
establish those two truths; you will then find the explanation of all
phenomenal existence.
"'Oh, monsieur!' he cried, striking his brow, 'when I know that I
carry here the last word of Creation, when intuitively I perceive the
Unconditioned, is it LIVING to be dragged hither and thither in the
ruck of men who fly at each other's throats at the word of command
without knowing what they are doing? My actual life is an inverted
dream. My body comes and goes and acts; it moves amid bullets, and
cannon, and men; it crosses Europe at the will of a power I obey and
yet despise. My soul has no consciousness of these acts; it is fixed,
immovable, plunged in one idea, rapt in that idea, the Search for the
Alkahest,--for that principle by which seeds that are absolutely
alike, growing in the same environments, produce, some a white, others
a yellow flower. The same phenomenon is seen in silkworms fed from the
same leaves, and apparently constituted exactly alike,--one produces
yellow silk, another white; and if we come to man himself, we find
that children often resemble neither father nor mother.
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