Third stage: Unity of the products—chemical process.
[47]. The conclusions which may be deduced from this construction of dynamical phenomena are partly anticipated in what goes before. The following may serve for further explanation:
The chemical process, for example, in its highest perfection is a process of combustion. Now I have already shown on another occasion, that the condition of light in the body undergoing combustion is nothing else but the maximum of its positive electrical condition. For it is always the positively electrical condition that is also the combustible. Might not, then, this coexistence of the phenomenon of light with the chemical process in its highest perfection give us information about the ground of every phenomenon of light in Nature?
What happens, then, in the chemical process? Two whole products gravitate towards each other. The indifference of the individual is therefore absolutely cancelled. This absolute cancelling of indifference puts the whole body into the condition of light, just as the partial in the electric process puts it into a partial condition of light. Therefore, also the light—what seems to stream to us from the sun—is nothing else but the phenomenon of indifference cancelled at every step. For as gravity never ceases to act, its condition—antithesis—must be regarded as springing up again at every step. We should thus have in light a continual, visible appearing of gravitation, and it would be explained why, in the system of worlds, it is exactly those bodies which are the principal seat of gravity that are also the principal source of light. We should then, also, have an explanation of the connection in which the action of light stands to that of gravitation.
The manifold effects of light on the deviations of the magnetic needle, on atmospheric electricity, and on organic nature, would be explained by the very fact that light is the phenomenon of indifference continually cancelled—therefore, the phenomenon of the dynamical process continually rekindled. It is, therefore, one antithesis that prevails in all dynamical phenomena—in those of magnetism, electricity and light; for example, the antithesis, which is the condition of the electrical phenomena must already enter into the first construction of matter. For all bodies are certainly electrical.
[48]. Or rather, conversely, the more combustible is always also the positively electric; whence it is manifest that the body which burns has merely reached the maximum of + electricity.
[49]. And indeed it is so. What then is the absolute incombustible? Doubtless, simply that wherewith everything else burns—oxygen. But it is precisely this absolutely incombustible oxygen that is the principle of negative electricity, and thus we have a confirmation of what I have already stated in the Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, viz. that oxygen is a principle of a negative kind, and therefore the representative, as it were, of the power of attraction; whereas phlogiston, or, what is the same thing, positive electricity, is the representative of the positive, or of the force of repulsion. There has long been a theory that the magnetic, electric, chemical, and, finally, even the organic phenomena, are interwoven into one great interdependent whole. This must be established. It is certain that the connection of electricity with the process of combustion may be shown by numerous experiments. One of the most recent of these that has come to my knowledge I will cite. It occurs in Scherer’s Journal of Chemistry. If a Leyden jar is filled with iron filings, and repeatedly charged and discharged, and if, after the lapse of some time, this iron is taken out and placed upon an isolator—paper, for example—it begins to get hot, becomes incandescent, and changes into an oxide of iron. This experiment deserves to be frequently repeated and more closely examined—it might readily lead to something new.
This great interdependence, which a scientific system of physics must establish, extends over the whole of Nature. It must, therefore, once established, spread a new light over the History of the whole of Nature. Thus, for example, it is certain that all geology must start from terrestrial magnetism. But terrestrial electricity must again be determined by magnetism. The connection of North and South with magnetism is shown even by the irregular movements of the magnetic needle. But again, with universal electricity, which, no less than gravity and magnetism, has its indifference point—the universal process of combustion and all volcanic phenomena stand connected.
Therefore, it is certain that there is one chain going from universal magnetism down to the volcanic phenomena. Still these are all only scattered experiments.
In order to make this interdependence fully evident, we need the central phenomenon, or central experiment, of which Bacon speaks oracularly—(I mean the experiment wherein all those functions of matter, magnetism, electricity, &c., so run together in one phenomenon that the individual function is distinguishable)—proving that the one does not lose itself immediately in the other, but that each can be exhibited separately—an experiment which, when it is discovered, will stand in the same relation to the whole of Nature, as galvanism does to organic nature. [Compare this with the discourse on Faraday’s latest discovery, (1832,) p. 15. Complete Works, 1st Div., last vol.]