hidden from the senses, whose phenomena alone are perceptible,--a
thing, consequently, to which the idea of division and indivision
is inapplicable; and from the presence of this force, from the
hypothesis of an indeterminate and immaterial entity, is inferred
an indivisible material existence!

For the rest, M. Liebig confesses that it is IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE
MIND to conceive of particles absolutely indivisible; he
recognizes, further, that the FACT of this indivisibility is not
proved; but he adds that science cannot dispense with this
hypothesis: so that, by the confession of its teachers, chemistry
has for its point of departure a fiction as repugnant to the mind
as it is foreign to experience. What irony!

Atoms are unequal in weight, says M. Liebig, because unequal in
volume: nevertheless, it is impossible to demonstrate that
chemical equivalents express the relative weight of atoms, or, in
other words, that what the calculation of atomic equivalents
leads us to regard as an atom is not composed of several atoms.
This is tantamount to saying that MORE MATTER weighs more than
LESS MATTER; and, since weight is the essence of materiality, we
may logically conclude that, weight being universally identical
with itself, there is also an identity in matter; that the
differences of simple bodies are due solely, either to different
methods of atomic association, or to different degrees of
molecular condensation, and that, in reality, atoms are
transmutable: which M. Liebig does not admit.

"We have," he says, "no reason for believing that one element is
convertible into another element" (p. 135). What do you know