Page:Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 1 (1837).djvu/241

Rh connected with those of gravitation, as the chemical laws include the compositions and decompositions, the attractions and repulsions of ponderable bodies,) while electricity and galvanism, on the contrary, being more connected with light and heat, are found less inherent in terrestrial substances. A body which is an electric or galvanic conductor can be conceived to exist without electric or galvanic power; whereas no earthly substance can be imagined without the chemical effects proper to its composition, and the mechanical operations proper to its form. It is moreover worthy of remark how all this series of powers, which constitute in their totality the life of the planet, is found also in its single parts constantly and in the most various forms; for we find in every object a proportionate gravitation of the mass toward its centre. This fact explains the mutual attraction of two bodies floating in a fluid, the formation of a drop of water, and the nature of the globular form in general as one in which all the radii, or the relations of the periphery to its centre, are equal. It explains also the mutual illumination of single terrestrial bodies; the production of heat as the result of the collision of different bodies; the manifestation of electricity, not only in the stormy atmosphere, but also in resin and glass; and the manifestation of terrestrial magnetism in the smallest bar of iron. These objects, for the complete examination of their endless variety and eternal regularity, require a full development of the laws of chemistry and natural philosophy,—a development which would exceed the limits of this treatise as much as it does the powers of the author, and which, in its full and scientific comprehensiveness, is still a desideratum.

But our purpose demands a particular examination of the relation of water to the other atmospherical and terrestrial substances, more particularly because it forms, as we shall show, the most essential link between organized and unorganized bodies, or rather the constant source from which the former arise. Water considered in its threefold form, as solid, fluid, and gaseous, presents a true middle and connecting member between the planet and its atmosphere. It may be considered as the indifference of both,—on which fact depends its decomposition into a combustible element (hydrogen), and an element promoting combustion (oxygen), nay, it is in its purity really indifferent in respect to the other terrestrial as well as to atmospherical substances. But the manifold in nature, however far back in point of time we trace its origin, will be found constantly issuing out of the simple and indifferent; and on this very account water, as far as it appears an indifference, becomes the germ and source of an infinity of other forms; indeed it is a question whether we are not already justified in supposing, and whether further inquiries will not establish the fact, that both the planet and its atmosphere are but different developments of one and the same original fluid. Several, of the older chemists (Leidenfrost, Wallerius, Markgraff) have attempted to show, that even