Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/595

Rh alone and in its natural state. Viewed under the latter aspect, the terms 'fire,' 'matter of the sun, of light, and of heat,' are specially appropriate to it. Under such conditions, it is a substance which may be regarded as made up of infinitesimal particles, agitated by a very rapid and continuous motion, and hence essentially fluid. This substance, of which the sun is, as it were, the general reservoir, is emanating thence constantly, and is universally distributed throughout all bodies known to us, though not as a principle, or as essential to their constitution, inasmuch as we may deprive them of it—at least in great measure—witbout their suffering the least decomposition in consequence. . . . Yet the phenomena presented by inflammable substances in burning show that they really contain the matter of fire as one of their principles. . . . Let us, therefore, investigate the properties of this fire which has become fixed, and entered as a principle into bodies. To it we will specially assign the name of 'inflammable matter,' 'sulphur-principle,' and 'phlogiston,' to distinguish it from pure fire."

Again, much the same thing is to be found in Baumé's "Manuel de Chymie" (1765); as, for example:

In interpreting the above and other phlogistic writings by the light of modern doctrine, it is not meant to attribute to their several authors the precise notion of energy that now prevails. It is contended only that the phlogistians had, in their time, possession of a real truth in Nature which, altogether lost sight of in the intermediate period, has since crystallized out in a definite form. "I trust," said Beccher, "that I have got hold of my pitcher by the right handle." And what he and his followers got hold of and retained so tenaciously, though it may be shiftingly and ignorantly, we now hold to knowingly, definitely, and quantitatively, as part and parcel of the grandest generalization in science that has ever yet been established.