The Philosophy of Misery | Page 8

not yet discovered; likewise
astrology was the religious period of another science, since
established,--astronomy.
[3] See, among others, Auguste Comte, "Course of Positive
Philosophy," and P. J. Proudhon, "Creation of Order in Humanity."

Now, after being laughed at for sixty years about the philosopher's
stone, chemists, governed by experience, no longer dare to deny the
transmutability of bodies; while astronomers are led by the structure of
the world to suspect also an organism of the world; that is, something
precisely like astrology. Are we not justified in saying, in imitation of
the philosopher just quoted, that, if a little chemistry leads away from
the philosopher's stone, much chemistry leads back to it; and similarly,

that, if a little astronomy makes us laugh at astrologers, much
astronomy will make us believe in them?[4]
[4] I do not mean to affirm here in a positive manner the
transmutability of bodies, or to point it out as a subject for investigation;
still less do I pretend to say what ought to be the opinion of savants
upon this point. I wish only to call attention to the species of scepticism
generated in every uninformed mind by the most general conclusions of
chemical philosophy, or, better, by the irreconcilable hypotheses which
serve as the basis of its theories. Chemistry is truly the despair of
reason: on all sides it mingles with the fanciful; and the more
knowledge of it we gain by experience, the more it envelops itself in
impenetrable mysteries. This thought was recently suggested to me by
reading M. Liebig's "Letters on Chemistry" (Paris, Masgana, 1845,
translation of Bertet-Dupiney and Dubreuil Helion).
Thus M. Liebig, after having banished from science hypothetical causes
and all the entities admitted by the ancients,--such as the creative power
of matter, the horror of a vacuum, the esprit recteur, etc. (p.
22),--admits immediately, as necessary to the comprehension of
chemical phenomena, a series of entities no less obscure,--vital force,
chemical force, electric force, the force of attraction, etc. (pp. 146, 149).
One might call it a realization of the properties of bodies, in imitation
of the psychologists' realization of the faculties of the soul under the
names liberty, imagination, memory, etc. 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. Liebig confesses that it is IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE
MIND to conceive of particles absolutely indivisible; he recognizes,
further, that the FACT of this indivisibility is not proved; but he adds
that science cannot dispense with this hypothesis: so that, by the
confession of its teachers, chemistry has for its point of departure a
fiction as repugnant to the mind as it is foreign to experience. What
irony!
Atoms are unequal in weight, says M. Liebig, because unequal in
volume: nevertheless, it is impossible to demonstrate that chemical
equivalents express the relative weight of atoms, or, in other words,
that what the calculation of atomic equivalents leads us to regard as an
atom is not composed of several atoms. This is tantamount to saying
that MORE MATTER weighs more than LESS MATTER; and, since
weight is the essence of materiality, we may logically conclude that,
weight being universally identical with itself, there is also an identity in
matter; that the differences of simple bodies are due solely, either to
different methods of atomic association, or to different degrees of
molecular condensation, and that, in reality, atoms are transmutable:
which M. Liebig does not admit.
"We have," he says, "no reason for believing that one element is
convertible into another element" (p. 135). What do you know about it?
The reasons for believing in such a conversion can very