The first principles of matter

Examination of prime matter. Newton’s error. There are no true transmutations. Newton admits atoms.

It is not a matter here of examining which system was more ridiculous: the one that made water the principle of everything, the one that attributed everything to fire, or the one that imagined dice placed right against one another without any interval, spinning somehow upon themselves.

The most plausible system has always been that there is a prime matter, indifferent to everything, uniform and capable of taking all forms, which, when differently combined, constitutes this universe. The elements of this matter are the same; it modifies itself according to the different molds through which it passes, as molten metal becomes now an urn, now a statue.

This was the opinion of Descartes, and it agrees very well with the chimera of his three elements. Newton thought similarly to Descartes on this point about matter; but he reached that conclusion by another route. Since he hardly ever formed a judgment that was not founded either on mathematical evidence or on experiment, he believed he had experience on his side in this investigation.

The illustrious Robert Boyle, the founder of physics in England, had kept water in a retort for a long time under equal heat; the chemist working with him believed the water had finally turned into earth. The fact was false, as Boerhaave—physician as exact as he was skilled—later proved: the water had evaporated, and the “earth” that appeared in its place came from elsewhere.

How much we must mistrust experience, since it misled Boyle and Newton! These great philosophers did not hesitate to believe that since the primitive parts of water changed into primitive parts of earth, the elements of things are but the same matter differently arranged.

If a false experiment had not led Newton to this conclusion, it is likely that he would have reasoned quite differently.

I beg the reader to pay close attention to what follows.

The only way that belongs to man for reasoning about objects is analysis. To leap immediately to first principles belongs only to God; and if one may without blasphemy compare God to an architect, and the universe to a building, what traveler, seeing part of the exterior of a building, would dare all at once to imagine the whole inner structure? And yet, this is what almost all philosophers have dared to do—with a thousand times more rashness.

Let us examine then this edifice as far as we can: what do we find around us? Animals, plants, minerals (under which term I include all salts, sulfurs, etc.), mud, sand, water, fire, air, and nothing else—at least up to now.

Before examining whether these bodies are mixed or not, I ask myself whether it is possible that a so-called uniform matter, which in itself is none of the things that exist, could nevertheless produce all the things that exist.

What is a prime matter that is none of the things of this world, yet produces them all? It is something of which I can have no idea, and therefore something I should not admit.

It is true that I can form in general the idea of an extended, impenetrable, and shapable substance, without directing my thought to sand or mud or gold, etc.; but nevertheless, either this matter is actually one of these things, or it is nothing at all.

Likewise, I can think of a triangle in general, without fixing on the equilateral, scalene, or isosceles triangle; but a triangle that exists must be one of these.

This idea alone, well considered, is perhaps enough to destroy the opinion of a prime matter.

If any matter set in motion were enough to produce what we see on earth, there would be no reason why dust, well stirred in a barrel, could not produce men and trees—nor why a field sown with wheat could not produce whales and crayfish instead of grain.

It is in vain to respond that the molds and filters that receive the seeds prevent this; for one must always return to this question: why are these molds, these filters so invariably determined?

Now if no movement, no art has ever been able to produce fish instead of wheat in a field, or medlars instead of a lamb in a sheep’s womb, or roses on the top of an oak, or soles in a beehive, etc.—if all species are invariably the same—should I not reasonably believe first of all that all species were determined by the Master of the world; that there are as many different designs as there are different species, and that from matter and motion alone nothing would be born but an eternal chaos without those designs?

All experiments confirm me in this sentiment.

If I examine on one side a man or a silkworm, and on the other a bird and a fish, I see them all formed from the beginning of things; I see in them only a development.

That of man and insect has some resemblances and some differences; that of fish and bird has others.

We are a worm before we are received into our mother’s womb; we become chrysalises, nymphs in the uterus, when we are in that envelope called the caul; we come out with arms and legs, just as the worm, turned into a gnat, comes out of its tomb with wings and feet; we live a few days like it, and our body then dissolves as its body does.

Among reptiles, some are oviparous, others viviparous; in fish, the female is fertile without the approach of the male, who merely passes over the deposited eggs to make them hatch. Aphids, oysters, etc., produce their kind alone, and without the mingling of two sexes. Polypi have within them the means to regrow their heads when they are cut off. Crawfish grow back their claws.

Plants and minerals form in completely different ways. Each type of being is a world apart; and far from a blind matter producing everything by simple motion, it seems very likely that God formed an infinity of beings with infinite means, because He Himself is infinite.

This, to begin with, is what I suspect when I consider nature.

But if I go into detail, if I experiment on each thing, here is what results:

I see mixtures such as plants and animals, which I decompose, and from which I extract certain coarse elements—spirit, phlegm, sulfur, salt, caput mortuum.

I see other bodies, such as metals and minerals, from which I can never extract anything but their own more attenuated parts.

Never has pure gold yielded anything but gold; never with pure mercury has anything been obtained but mercury.

Sand, plain mud, plain water, have never been changed into any other type of being.

What can I conclude, except that plants and animals are composed of these other primitive beings that never decompose?

These unalterable primitive beings are the elements of bodies: man and the gnat are therefore a compound of the mineral parts of mud, sand, fire, air, water, sulfur, salt; and all these primitive parts, forever indecomposable, are elements, each with its own fixed and invariable nature.

To dare to assert the contrary, one would have to have seen transmutations; but has anyone ever discovered them through chemistry?

Is not the philosopher’s stone regarded as impossible by every wise mind?

Is it any more possible, in the present state of the world, for salt to change into sulfur, for water into earth, for air into fire, than to make gold with the powder of projection?

When men believed in literal transmutations, were they not deceived by appearances, just as those who believed the sun moved?

For seeing wheat and water converted in human bodies into blood and flesh, who would not have believed in transmutations?

However, is all this anything more than salts, sulfurs, mud, etc., differently arranged in the wheat and in our bodies?

The more I reflect, the more a metamorphosis, taken strictly, seems to me nothing but a contradiction in terms.

For the primitive parts of salt to change into the primitive parts of gold, two things are needed, I think: to annihilate those elements of salt, and to create elements of gold.

This is, in the end, what these supposed metamorphoses of a homogeneous and uniform matter amount to—matter accepted until now by so many philosophers—and here is my proof:

It is impossible to conceive the immutability of species unless they are composed of unalterable principles.

For these principles, these first constituent parts, not to change, they must be perfectly solid, and therefore always of the same figure: if they are such, they cannot become other elements, for they would have to receive other shapes;

therefore, since it is impossible that, in the present constitution of this universe, the element that serves to make salt be changed into the element of mercury, it would be necessary, in order to make an element of salt in the place of an element of mercury, to annihilate one of those elements, and to create another in its place.

I do not know how Newton, who admitted atoms, did not draw this very natural inference. He acknowledged true atoms, indivisible bodies like Gassendi; but he had arrived at this assertion through mathematics; and at the same time he believed that these atoms, these indivisible elements, were continually changing into one another.

Newton was a man; he could be mistaken, like us.

One will no doubt ask here how, if the seeds of things are hard and indivisible, they can grow and expand: they probably grow only by assembly, by contiguity; several atoms of water form a drop, and so on for everything else.

It will remain to be known how this contiguity takes place, how the parts of bodies are bound together. Perhaps this is one of the Creator’s secrets, which will remain forever unknown to mankind.

To know how the constituent parts of gold form a piece of gold, it would seem necessary to see these parts.

If it were permitted to say that attraction is probably the cause of this adhesion and continuity of matter, this would be the most plausible assertion one could make: for indeed, if it is demonstrated, as we shall see, that all the parts of matter gravitate toward one another—whatever the cause may be—can anything seem more natural than that bodies which touch at more points are the most strongly united together by the force of this gravitation?

But this is not the place to go into that physical detail.