From “Letters on Chemistry.”

MANY of the fundamental or leading ideas of the present time appear, to him who knows not what science has already achieved, as extravagant as the notions of the alchemists. Not, indeed, the transmutation of metals, which seemed so probable to the Ancients, but far stranger things are held by us to be attainable. We have become so accustomed to wonders, that nothing any longer excites our wonder. We fix the solar rays on paper, and send our thoughts literally with the velocity of lightning to the greatest distances. We can, as it were, melt copper in cold water, and cast it into statues. We can freeze water into ice, or mercury into a solid malleable mass, in white-hot crucibles; and we consider it quite practicable to illuminate most brightly entire cities with lamps devoid of flame or fire, and to which the air has no access. We produce, artificially, ultramarine, one of the most precious minerals; and we believe that to-morrow or next day some one may discover a method of producing from a piece of charcoal a splendid diamond; from a bit of alum, sapphires or rubies; or from coal tar the beautiful coloring principle of madder, or the valuable remedies known as quinine and morphine. All these things are either as precious or more useful than gold. Every one is occupied in the attempt to discover them, and yet this is the occupation of no individual inquirer. All are occupied with these things, inasmuch as they study the laws of the changes and transformations to which matter is subject; and yet no one individual is specially engaged in these researches, inasmuch as no one, for example, devotes his life and energies to the solution of the problem of making diamonds or quinine. Did such a man exist, furnished with the necessary knowledge, and with the courage and perseverance of the old goldmakers, he would have a good prospect of being enabled to solve such problems. The latest discoveries on the constitution and production of the organic bases permit us to believe all this, without giving to any one the right to ridicule us as makers of gold.

  Science has demonstrated that man, the being who performs all these wonders, is formed of condensed or solidified or liquefied gases; that he lives on condensed as well as uncondensed gases, and clothes himself in condensed gases; that he prepares his food by means of condensed gas, and, by means of the same agent, moves the heaviest weights with the velocity of the wind. But the strangest part of the matter is, that thousands of these tabernacles formed of condensed gas, and going on two legs, occasionally, and on account of the production and supply of those forms of condensed gas which they require for food and clothing, or on account of their honor and power, destroy each other in pitched battles by means of condensed gas; and, further, that many believe the peculiar powers of the bodiless, conscious, thinking, and sensitive being, housed in this tabernacle, to be the result, simply, of its internal structure and the arrangement of its particles or atoms.