My mind is limited in its power
of speculation, and I am forced to believe that these molecules must
have been made as they are from the beginning of their existence.
I also conclude that since none of the processes of nature, during
their varied action on different individual molecules, have produced,
in the course of ages, the slightest difference between the properties
of one molecule and those of another, the history of whose
combinations has been different, we cannot ascribe either their
existence or the identity of their properties to the operation of any
of those causes which we call natural.
Is it true then that our scientific speculations have really
penetrated beneath the visible appearance of things, which seem to be
subject to generation and corruption, and reached the entrance of that
world of order and perfection, which continues this day as it was
created, perfect in number and measure and weight?
We may be mistaken. No one has as yet seen or handled an individual
molecule, and our molecular hypothesis may, in its turn, be supplanted
by some new theory of the constitution of matter; but the idea of the
existence of unnumbered individual things, all alike and all
unchangeable, is one which cannot enter the human mind and remain
without fruit.
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