"'My master's opinion was that these fifty-three primary bodies have one originating principle, acted upon in the past by some force the knowledge of which has perished to-day, but which human genius ought to rediscover.Well, then, suppose that this force does live and act again; we have chemical unity.Organic and inorganic nature would apparently then rest on four essential principles,--in fact, if we could decompose nitrogen which we ought to consider a negation, we should have but three.This brings us at once close upon the great Ternary of the ancients and of the alchemists of the Middle Ages, whom we do wrong to scorn.Modern chemistry is nothing more than that.It is much, and yet little,--much, because the science has never recoiled before difficulty; little, in comparison with what remains to be done.
Chance has served her well, my noble Science! Is not that tear of crystallized pure carbon, the diamond, seemingly the last substance possible to create? The old alchemists, who thought that gold was decomposable and therefore creatable, shrank from the idea of producing the diamond.Yet we have discovered the nature and the law of its composition.
"'As for me,' he continued, 'I have gone farther still.An experiment proved to me that the mysterious Ternary, which has occupied the human mind from time immemorial, will not be found by physical analyses, which lack direction to a fixed point.I will relate, in the first place, the experiment itself.
"'Sow cress-seed (to take one among the many substances of organic nature) in flour of brimstone (to take another simple substance).
Sprinkle the seed with distilled water, that no unknown element may reach the product of the germination.The seed germinates, and sprouts from a known environment, and feeds only on elements known by analysis.Cut off the stalks from time to time, till you get a sufficient quantity to produce after burning them enough ashes for the experiment.Well, by analyzing those ashes, you will obtain silicic acid, aluminium, phosphate and carbonate of lime, carbonate of magnesia, the sulphate and carbonate of potassium, and oxide of iron, precisely as if the cress had grown in ordinary earth, beside a brook.
Now, those elements did not exist in the brimstone, a simple substance which served for soil to the cress, nor in the distilled water with which the plant was nourished, whose composition was known.But since they are no more to be found in the seed itself, we can explain their presence in the plant only by assuming the existence of a primary element common to all the substances contained in the cress, and also to all those by which we environed it.Thus the air, the distilled water, the brimstone, and the various elements which analysis finds in the cress, namely, potash, lime, magnesia, aluminium, etc., should have one common principle floating in the atmosphere like light of the sun.
"'From this unimpeachable experiment,' he cried, 'I deduce the existence of the Alkahest, the Absolute,--a substance common to all created things, differentiated by one primary force.Such is the net meaning and position of the problem of the Absolute, which appears to me to be solvable.In it we find the mysterious Ternary, before whose shrine humanity has knelt from the dawn of ages,--the primary matter, the medium, the product.We find that terrible number THREE in all things human.It governs religions, sciences, and laws.
"'It was at this point,' he went on, 'that poverty put an end to my researches.You were the pupil of Lavoisier, you are rich, and master of your own time, I will therefore tell you my conjectures.Listen to the conclusions my personal experiments have led me to foresee.The PRIME MATTER must be the common principle in the three gases and in carbon.The MEDIUM must be the principle common to negative and positive electricity.Proceed to the discovery of the proofs that will establish those two truths; you will then find the explanation of all phenomenal existence.
"'Oh, monsieur!' he cried, striking his brow, 'when I know that Icarry here the last word of Creation, when intuitively I perceive the Unconditioned, is it LIVING to be dragged hither and thither in the ruck of men who fly at each other's throats at the word of command without knowing what they are doing? My actual life is an inverted dream.My body comes and goes and acts; it moves amid bullets, and cannon, and men; it crosses Europe at the will of a power I obey and yet despise.My soul has no consciousness of these acts; it is fixed, immovable, plunged in one idea, rapt in that idea, the Search for the Alkahest,--for that principle by which seeds that are absolutely alike, growing in the same environments, produce, some a white, others a yellow flower.The same phenomenon is seen in silkworms fed from the same leaves, and apparently constituted exactly alike,--one produces yellow silk, another white; and if we come to man himself, we find that children often resemble neither father nor mother.The logical deduction from this fact surely involves the explanation of all the phenomena of nature.