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Although unwilling to offend, he was accustomed sometimes to give severe rebukes to ignorance when it pretended to know, and in this capacity alone do we find him ever creating a feeling of opposition in those who surrounded him, although even this was seldom, and only on great provocations, and chiefly in his character as President of the Philosophical Society, where the exercise of wise authority was expected and desired. Local memory tells us of several severe, but well deserved and not ill-natured rebukes.

In a life of labor, of experiments with weights and with numbers, it is seldom that the imagination flourishes, and so we find that literature was entirely neglected, and his own discoveries have not been illuminated by the radiance which it is in the power of some men to shed around the creations of their mind, but have been sent out dry and hard into the world to gather as they best might the life which he was certain of obtaining for them.

In this is the secret of many varying opinions about Dalton ; this is the secret of his want of success in early life, of his remaining so long apart from scientific men, and of the disputes as to his originality. The "genial current of the soul" had been constitutionally stopped, and words were wanting to express his feeling, which at last seemed not even to struggle for utterance. He gave us knowledge, mere knowledge does not give life until it is become a familiar inmate of the mind, until we can see it in all or many of its aspects, until it becomes an object on which we delight to gaze, and seeing its beauty begin to surround it with results from the imagination. He that can do this, putting the results of science into a poetic form, and impressing them upon the mind, receives often more admiration than the originator, the exertions of whose whole life may probably be summed up in a sentence, and seen at a glance by the popular eye; but experience proves that the original work requires a persistance of effort and a clearness of conception, which are very rarely united.

True, Davy and Dumas add poetry and eloquence to sterling scientific vigour, whilst in Dalton we find only strength and rude simplicity; the glowing radiance which dazzles us in the writings, and even in the characters of some men, is wanting in him; but strength and simplicity are rare and valuable gifts, although we must look to their combination with beauty in its widest sense for the very highest standard of mankind.

CHAPTER IV.

HISTORY OF THE ATOMIC THEORY.

IDEAS OF MATTER UP TO THE TIME OF LUCRETIUS.

THERE is no chapter in the history of man more marvellous than that which deals with his conception of matter. There has been the greatest difficulty in all ages in comprehending its existence, and still more so in conceiving how it can be constituted of so many different substances. It seems, beyond expression, strange, that although himself made of matter, and exposed so frequently to the pain of living in regions covered with most inhospitable forms of it, or tossed about in an unmanageable ocean of the same, he should still for a long time confuse the conception of it with spiritual existence, and still longer fail to obtain any distinct idea of the cause of their diversity. I do not allude only to the metaphysical difficulties even now unsolved as to the existence of matter, but to those perhaps most apparent in the history of the physical sciences. The difficulties have begun with the savage who scarcely distinguishes the wood from his divinity, and still less divides substances into classes. They are difficulties which, in one form or other, have struggled long in man, and the progress of which may be seen perhaps most clearly in the Greek, but more or less in all nations who have thought on philosophical subjects, whilst the struggle in Europe in the middle ages was long and violent, occupying the most active minds of the age. It is strange to observe the pertinacity of man in deciding that matter is one, that all substances have the same substratum

without distinct facts as a proof, but relying on his reasoning powers alone; deciding that fire, air, earth, and water, are the same, although burnt out of his house by one, and drowned by the other, and to obtain a third, risking everything that he possesses. He has with difficulty been able to think of the facts before him, except under the influence of some previous conclusion, and pressed to the earth as he has been by physical difficulties, as well as by sensuality, he has continually clothed it with immateriality. Sometimes he appears as a spiritual being, from some higher state of his metempsychosis, with difficulty treating conceptions new to him about mere material things, or perhaps more like a material being oppressed with weakness of conception, grasping at more than he can understand, he has failed to see clearly the facts that of all others seem to stand most prominent before him.

The idea of matter representing the present stratum of knowledge obtained from experiment, and which chemists so long entirely missed, is, that there exist bodies which we cannot divide and call simple, that these by union among themselves form other bodies; that when united the original bodies are by no means lost, and may be again separated without losing any of their original indestructible properties. This statement is a simple relation of facts. These bodies may be farther divisible; they may be, and probably are, all convertible into one, but when we trace them further than our experiments warrant us, we go back to the position of the Greeks, who have already said nearly all that the mind seems able to attain to, unassisted by the study of nature. Indeed, this idea cannot be said to be in any way new, but one of the very oldest, although frequently lost, to be seen at intervals in fragments, but not until within the memory of man to obtain permanent ground in science: although inevitably doomed to prove only a portion of the truth, it is no less true in its own limits. So simple is the idea, requiring too such enormous labour and long time to

obtain, that it makes us readily believe that we may now be living under the grossest delusions which a little spark of genius might readily dispel, revealing to us a world entirely different to that which we are accustomed to see; and without a doubt this is to a great extent the case.

As an instance of the difficulty of arriving at a rational conception of material phenomena, but more especially in order to give a sketch of the history of the subject, I shall adduce the opinions shortly expressed of some of the most prominent thinkers of ancient times.

Much as has been written on this ancient part of philosophical history, a full as well as distinct account is still wanting. Most writers give us so much explanation, that we cannot understand them: the collected fragments would form a valuable volume. The physical has generally been given as a mere appendage to the metaphysical history.

Although the earliest opinions relate more directly to creation or cosmogony than to the nature of combinations, they still are interesting in connection with our subject, as they show us the early methods of viewing matter, and illustrate the difficulties as well as progress of the subject. Of the early Greek schools, where fragments only exist, I shall give a few particulars taken chiefly from Ritter and Tiedemann, not giving the original words of the ancient authors, some of which have been lost, and others greatly scattered.*

Thales considered the earth to be a living being, and the only primitive principle from which all things are formed to be water. He observed, no doubt, that where there is no water, there is no growth of vegetable or animal life. The vegetables are fed by the rain; they contain water in their juices, or they do not live. Animals dried up are dead. Life goes on in the world only with water, even the

* Ritter's "Geschichte der Philosophie." I used the French edition. Tiedemann's "Geist der Spekulativen Philosophie."

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