Did he only speak geometrically? In that case, this doubt was useless. It is evident that he doubted of the nature of elementary fire, and doubted with reason.
Is elementary fire a body like others, as earth and water? If it was a body of this kind, would it not gravitate like all other matter? Would it escape from the luminous body in the right line? Would it have a uniform progression? And why does light never move out of a right line when it is unimpeded in its rapid course?
May not elementary fire have properties of matter little known to us, and properties of substance entirely so? May it not be a medium between matter and substances of another kind? And who can say that there are not a million of these substances? I do not say that there are, but I say it is not proved that there may not be.
It was very difficult to believe about a hundred years ago that bodies acted upon one another, not only without touching, and without emission, but at great distances; it is, however, found to be true, and is no longer doubted. At present, it is difficult to believe that the rays of the sun are penetrable by each other, but who knows what may happen to prove it?
However that may be, I wish, for the novelty of the thing, that this incomprehensible penetrability could be admitted. Light has something so divine that we should endeavor to make it a step to the discovery of substances still more pure.
Come to my aid, Empedocles and Democritus; come and admire the wonders of electricity; see if the sparks which traverse a thousand bodies in the twinkling of an eye are of ordinary matter; judge if elementary fire does not contract the heart, and communicate that warmth which gives life! Judge if this element is not the source of all sensation, and if sensation is not the origin of thought; though ignorant and insolent pedants have condemned the proposition, as one which should be persecuted.
Tell me, if the Supreme Being, who presides over all nature, cannot forever preserve these elementary atoms which he has so rarely endowed? "Igneus est ollis vigor et cœlestis origo."
The celebrated Le Cat calls this vivifying fluid "an amphibious being, endowed by its author with a superior refinement which links it to immaterial beings, and thereby ennobles and elevates it into that medium nature which we recognize, and which is the source of all its properties."
You are of the opinion of Le Cat? I would be so too if I could; but there are so many fools and villains that I dare not. I can only think quietly in my own way at Mount Krapak. Let others think as well as they are allowed to think, whether at Salamanca or Bergamo.