Now, analysis has reduced all the products of this nature to four simple substances, namely: three gases, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen, and another simple substance, non-metallic and solid, carbon.

Inorganic nature, on the contrary, so simple, devoid of movement and sensation, denied the power of growth (too hastily accorded to it by Linnaeus), possesses fifty-three simple substances, or elements, whose different combinations make its products.

Is it probable that means should be more numerous where a lesser number of results are produced?
"'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.