Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/379

Rh In 1760 another dreamer, Tiphaigne de La Roche, published under the title of Giphantie, an anagram of his name, a curious little work in which photography is described—in the ultimate state to which it has just been brought—with the reproduction of the colors. Tiphaigne supposes himself transported to the palace of the elementary genii, the chief of whom told him: "You know that the rays of light, reflected from different bodies, form a picture and depict those bodies on all smooth surfaces, like the retina of the eye, water, and ice. The elementary spirits have endeavored to fix those transient images; they have composed a very subtle and viscous matter, quick in drying and hardening, by means of which a picture is made in a wink. They wash a piece of cloth with this matter, and present it to the objects which they desire to depict. The first effect of the varnished cloth is that of a mirror, in which one can see all the bodies, near and distant, of which the light can bring the image. The cloth with its viscous coating holds the images, which the glass can not do. The mirror represents the objects faithfully to you, but retains none; our cloths represent them no less faithfully, but keep them all. The impression of the images is made the instant the cloth receives them. It is taken away at once, and put in a dark place; an hour later, the coating has dried, and you have a picture, all the more precious because no art can imitate the truthfulness of it, and time can not damage it in any way. We take from the purest source, the body of light, the colors which painters extract from different materials, and which time never fails to change. The precision of the design, the variety of the expression, the touches of more or less strength, the gradation of shades, the rules of perspective, are all abandoned to Nature, which, with a sure course that is never false to itself, traces on our cloths the images which are imposed by her on our eyes, and cause us to question whether what we call realities are not other kinds of phantoms imposed upon our sight, hearing, touch, and all the senses at once. The elementary spirit then went into physical details; first on the nature of the adhesive substance which intercepts and holds the rays; then on the difficulties met in preparing and using it; and, lastly, on the part played by light and the dried substance; three problems which I propose to the physicists of our time, and leave to their sagacity."

The function given by Tiphaigne to the elementary spirits suggests that that author had been initiated into the occult sciences, according to which all the substances in nature possess a proper life, a kind of mortal soul, defined by the term elemental, which directs their reciprocal actions.

"There is not a thing in the world, not a blade of grass, over which a spirit does not reign," says the Cabala of the Jews;