< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu
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569
THE REVIVED THEORY OF PHLOGISTON.
alone and in its natural state. Viewed under the latter aspect, the terms 'fire,' 'matter of the sun, of light, and of heat,' are specially appropriate to it. Under such conditions, it is a substance which may be regarded as made up of infinitesimal particles, agitated by a very rapid and continuous motion, and hence essentially fluid. This substance, of which the sun is, as it were, the general reservoir, is emanating thence constantly, and is universally distributed throughout all bodies known to us, though not as a principle, or as essential to their constitution, inasmuch as we may deprive them of it—at least in great measure—witbout their suffering the least decomposition in consequence. . . . Yet the phenomena presented by inflammable substances in burning show that they really contain the matter of fire as one of their principles. . . . Let us, therefore, investigate the properties of this fire which has become fixed, and entered as a principle into bodies. To it we will specially assign the name of 'inflammable matter,' 'sulphur-principle,' and 'phlogiston,' to distinguish it from pure fire."

Again, much the same thing is to be found in Baumé's "Manuel de Chymie" (1765); as, for example:

"We consider fire in two different states: when it is pure, isolated, and forming no part of any compound. . . . when it is combined with other substances, forming one of the constituent principles of compound bodies. . . . We have no certainty whether or not fire possesses weight. There are experiments pro and contra. . . . During the combustion of substances, combined fire is reduced to elementary fire, and is dissipated as the process goes on. The famous Boerhaave, however, is not of this opinion; he says that, were this the case, the amount of elementary fire in Nature must increase ad infinitum. . . . But it is easy to reply to this objection by saying that, as we have the right to presume, the elementary fire discharged from bodies combines with other substances, and that it loses all its properties as free fire on becoming a constituent principle of bodies into the composition of which it enters. . . . The principle here spoken of is that to which Stahl has given the name of phlogiston."

In interpreting the above and other phlogistic writings by the light of modern doctrine, it is not meant to attribute to their several authors the precise notion of energy that now prevails. It is contended only that the phlogistians had, in their time, possession of a real truth in Nature which, altogether lost sight of in the intermediate period, has since crystallized out in a definite form. "I trust," said Beccher, "that I have got hold of my pitcher by the right handle." And what he and his followers got hold of and retained so tenaciously, though it may be shiftingly and ignorantly, we now hold to knowingly, definitely, and quantitatively, as part and parcel of the grandest generalization in science that has ever yet been established.

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