[3] See, among others, Auguste Comte, "Course of Positive
Philosophy," and P. J. Proudhon, "Creation of Order in Humanity."



Now, after being laughed at for sixty years about the
philosopher's stone, chemists, governed by experience, no longer
dare to deny the transmutability of bodies; while astronomers
are led by the structure of the world to suspect also an organism
of the world; that is, something precisely like astrology. Are
we not justified in saying, in imitation of the philosopher just
quoted, that, if a little chemistry leads away from the
philosopher's stone, much chemistry leads back to it; and
similarly, that, if a little astronomy makes us laugh at
astrologers, much astronomy will make us believe in them?[4]


[4] I do not mean to affirm here in a positive manner the
transmutability of bodies, or to point it out as a subject for
investigation; still less do I pretend to say what ought to be
the opinion of savants upon this point. I wish only to call
attention to the species of scepticism generated in every
uninformed mind by the most general conclusions of chemical
philosophy, or, better, by the irreconcilable hypotheses which
serve as the basis of its theories. Chemistry is truly the
despair of reason: on all sides it mingles with the fanciful; and
the more knowledge of it we gain by experience, the more it
envelops itself in impenetrable mysteries. This thought was
recently suggested to me by reading M. Liebig's "Letters on
Chemistry" (Paris, Masgana, 1845, translation of Bertet-Dupiney