Why not keep to the
elements? Why, if the atoms have weight of their own, as M.
Liebig appears to believe, may they not also have electricity and
life of their own? Curious thing! the phenomena of matter, like
those of mind, become intelligible only by supposing them to be
produced by unintelligible forces and governed by contradictory
laws: such is the inference to be drawn from every page of M.
Liebig's book.
Matter, according to M. Liebig, is essentially inert and entirely
destitute of spontaneous activity (p. 148): why, then, do the
atoms have weight? Is not the weight inherent in atoms the real,
eternal, and spontaneous motion of matter? And that which we
chance to regard as rest,--may it not be equilibrium rather?
Why, then, suppose now an inertia which definitions contradict,
now an external potentiality which nothing proves?
Atoms having WEIGHT, M. Liebig infers that they are INDIVISIBLE
(p. 58). What logic! Weight is only force, that is, a thing
hidden from the senses, whose phenomena alone are perceptible,--a
thing, consequently, to which the idea of division and indivision
is inapplicable; and from the presence of this force, from the
hypothesis of an indeterminate and immaterial entity, is inferred
an indivisible material existence!
For the rest, M.
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