I.
The system which reduces every thing in matter to movements is as simple as it is curious. It exhibits at the same time a character of grandeur and of unity which is seductive. Matter in the universe, it says,[198] remains the same in quantity; it is neither created nor destroyed; its phenomena are merely transformations.
According to this system, the abstract notion of force does not exist. Force is a cause of motion; and the cause of motion is a motion itself. Physical phenomena, as heat, light, electricity, and magnetism, are certain kinds of motion, which beget each other. Heat is transformed into electricity and electricity into light. Transformations take place according to fixed rules, and are reduced to rigorously determined unities.
In another order of facts, cohesion, chemical affinity, and gravity, are equally the effects of communication of motion, since the phenomena which derive from them exist only by attraction—that is to say, by the movement of molecules and bodies toward each other.
The same rule holds good in the system of the universe; the heavenly as well as the terrestrial bodies have not in themselves that which attracts them to each other. Universal gravitation is only the expression of a result; it merely means that every thing happens as if bodies had the intrinsic property of attracting each other in the direct ratio of their quantity and the inverse ratio of their distance.
It is not this force or property; it is the ether which is the cause of attraction. The ether is composed of atoms which collide with each other and with neighboring bodies. It is everywhere diffused, forming a universal medium, and exercising a continual pressure on all the molecules in nature. The gravity of bodies is owing to the pressure of this medium. Their movement is, as it were, a transformation of the motions of ether. Thus, the ether, moving in every direction, and obeying no fixed pressure, produces material attraction without being subject to it; it gives to bodies their gravity, while it remains itself imponderable.[199]
It had been already physically demonstrated that sound and light were the result of undulations—that is, of motions; sonorous and luminous movements which have been measured and verified in all their modes. The nature of caloric movement has not yet been so completely understood; but the mechanical effects of heat have been established in the most precise manner. The identity of heat and of mechanical labor has become a commonly received idea for several years past. Heat, which was formerly regarded as a material substance, is now considered as a mere mode of motion; it is by their repercussion that the molecules of bodies cause us to experience the sensation of heat; and the intensity of these repercussions determines the degrees of temperature. This heat, manifesting itself by different effects, produces now light or sounds, again mechanical labor.
The energy or the living force which molecules or bodies in motion possess, in a degree exactly known, is partially lost if these molecules produce a work, that is to say, if they displace a quantity of matter; but in that case the living force which they lose is stored up in the labor produced, and is reborn when the latter ceases to exist.
Just as the calorific and luminous fluids are no longer regarded as possessing a special substance and existence, so also the electric fluid, positive as well as negative, and the magnetic fluid, which is only one of its derivatives, are but opposite movements of matter. The electrical movement of imponderable matter, or ether, is not even a vibratory motion; it is a real current, a real transport which takes place in the conducting body; and it is so far of the same nature as the luminous motion that it has approximately the same velocity—that is to say, it travels seventy-five thousand leagues a second.
Now, all these motions of heat, all these motions of light and electricity, which correlative phenomena offer, are all reducible to the idea of mechanical labor. Produced by one labor, they reproduce another. Thus disappear from chemistry, as from the natural sciences, the forces called repulsive as well as those called attractive. The molecules no longer act at a distance; actions take place by contact, by the communication of movements. In the same way the pressure exercised by the ethereal atoms on the molecules of the sidereal bodies takes the place of the initial force or acquired velocity which astronomy regarded as the cause of their movements.
According to this sovereign unity, the physical world is composed of one single element. There are no simple bodies. Oxygen and hydrogen, like gold or platina, are composed only of atoms. There is no difference in material quality; properties vary according to the diversity of movements. Becoming grouped and interwoven, the atoms form the molecules, and the changes of these movements constitute for us the different phenomena, the mode of which depends on the masses and the velocities which are in play.
Consequently, ethereal atoms, elementary molecules, compound or chemical molecules, particles of gaseous bodies, liquids, solids—such is the hierarchy of phenomena.
The system is triumphantly epitomized in these words:
Atoms and motion form the universe.
Let us pause before this conclusion, the simplicity of which is not without grandeur, although the theory is absolute and hasty. Let us be allowed to interfere in the name of the notion of causality, in the name of that metaphysics to which the system itself, although taking its starting-point from facts alone, renders homage by its generalizations and by its synthesis. If it confined itself exclusively to its conclusion, that atom and movement form the supreme axiom of the universe, we should have downright materialism. The author avoids this absolute conclusion, which would cause us, moreover, to go outside the limits of scientific research, and he admits that even in motion there are original causes which remain entirely unknown.
But this cannot suffice. Our mind sees this reserve and will not rest satisfied with it.
If the system merely gives to ethereal atoms the intrinsic force and primitive motion which it takes away from the molecules and bodies, it only postpones the difficulty and avoids the true solution. It merely admits an effect without assigning to it an origin or a reason of being. It does not indicate the primary cause of motion; it does not make known the prime mover, which neither facts nor reason can place in the atoms or in the phenomena.
Nor can the formation of worlds be explained by atoms and motion. The author[200] gives up facts, reality, and the logic of his own system when he supposes some of the chief primitive atoms forming the centre of a group for several others, and thus constituting a sphere. Then, after this operation in the universal mass, the molecular groups appear gifted with gravity and enter into that evolution which constitutes the admirable order of the universe.
We have no longer modern science arriving, by way of decomposition and analysis, at results as curious as they are incontestable. It is, in truth, but the renewal of an old system which goes as far back as ancient philosophy—to Leucippus, to Democritus, to Epicurus; a system without foundation or reality, which brings us to gross materialism, and gives us no rational or experimental explanation of phenomena.
For whence have these atoms come? Do you give them their reason of being by simply calling them primitive? Do they exist from all eternity, or have they created themselves? After being proclaimed indivisible points, they are, contrary to this principle of unity, made unequal and preponderating. Whence do they derive these contradictory, and at the same time indispensable characters, which enable them to perform their functions? Who has given them the first motion necessary for their meeting? Or, if they have been eternally in motion, does it not follow that the formations that are attributed to them must be also eternal? What causes them to produce ponderable molecules and to become heavy bodies while they are essentially imponderable and devoid of attraction?
As for us, a friend of truth, and believing that it can never be opposed to itself, having in its regard no fear or party prejudice, we are disposed to accept willingly the results given by scientific observation and experience, provided there be no disposition to draw conclusions from them which are not legitimate. We are far from disputing that matter is one in its grand simplicity, and that it is reducible to elements of one species; that phenomena of a single order, motion, produce all the effects of nature which we admire. The spiritualist philosophy will readily find in these atoms their first author, God, and in these movements God, the prime mover.
We also admit willingly that this theory holds good even in the domain of organized matter, and that, in the regular order of succession, it runs through all the kingdoms. We see nothing in this admission which contradicts directly our belief.
In fact, the system extends even to the order of living nature, and there it points out two things.
On the one hand, it indicates, as the basis and chief constituent of living beings, the very materials of the inorganic world, the solid bodies, liquids, gases, which we find in all organizations, and especially in the human organization, the most complex of all; for this organization comprises fourteen of those elements which we call simple bodies, because we have not been able as yet to reduce them.
On the other hand, in animated nature itself there takes place a series of motions which succeed each other according to a determined order, with an especial character, yet not opposed to the laws of molecular mechanism; so that in the human body in motion heat is transformed into work and work into heat, according to the ordinary relation of calorics, and the human mover gives in labor the same proportion of heat produced as the other movers.[201]
Does this mean, continues the author of the system, that we have in this process all the elements of life? What is the cause which forms the first cell, the basis of living bodies? What deduces from it the developments of being? What limits and regulates its evolution? "Here we must suspend our judgment, or admit a special cause, the principle of which is peculiar to vital phenomena."
This cause, although its nature is unknown and undetermined, is manifested by movements, and may take, according to the same order of ideas, the rôle and name of vital force. This force is endowed with a peculiar activity, which transforms without creating, just as motion only transforms in virtue of anterior movements.
This doctrine, pushed to extremity, seems to infer that the phenomena of thought and volition are only pure movements, the result of physical or vital actions. But is not the human soul, the animating principle, thereby put in danger?
The author thinks not. "In the midst of material transformations," says he, "causes active by nature may intervene, and we have instanced some of them, in marking the nature and limits of such intervention. This is sufficient to leave the ground free to all the solutions of metaphysics."
We are more affirmative and precise. These causes, from the starting-point of the atom and movement, necessarily exist and act. In fact, if the atom and movement are the universe, outside the universe there must be and there is something superior to the atom and to motion—that which has given them birth; for we cannot suppose that the atom exists by itself, nor that motion is produced by itself. All that we see and conceive about atom and motion only gives us phenomenal relations and contingent results. Beyond this is the absolute. The observations and relations which experience offers us may be fruitful enough to render an account of the facts, to extend and enlighten our knowledge, to establish laws and attest actions. But let us not grow tired in repeating that these actions are not produced alone, and that these laws suppose an ordainer.
Especially when we endeavor to understand the nature of life, atoms and movement may come again into play; but the cause increases and is detached from the functions of beings; and the superiority of the effects more imperiously establishes the necessity of an author.