for the spirits by which it is renewed contains no gelatin; the soul, excited by this, excites that; hence the place assigned to it "in the brain."--His "Optics"[3107] is the reverse of the great truth already discovered by Newton more than a century before, and since confirmed by more than another century of experiment and calculation. On "Heat" and "Electricity" he merely puts forth feeble hypotheses and literary generalizations; one day, driven to the wall, he inserts a needle in a resin to make this a conductor, in which piece of scientific trickery he is caught by the physicist Charles.[3108] He is not even qualified to comprehend the great discoverers of his age, Laplace, Monge, Lavoisier, or Fourcroy; on the contrary, he libels them in the style of a low rebellious subordinate, who, without the shadow of a claim, aims to take the place of legitimate authorities. In Politics, he adopts every absurd idea in vogue growing out of the "Contrat-Social" based on natural right, and which he renders still more absurd by repeating as his own the arguments advanced by those bungling socialists, who, physiologists astray in the moral world, derive all rights from physical necessities. "All human rights issue from physical wants[3109]... If a man has nothing, he has a right to any surplus with which another gorges himself. What do I say? He has a right to seize the indispensable, and, rather than die of hunger, he may cut another's throat and eat his throbbing flesh.... Man has a right to self-preservation, to the property, the liberty and even the lives of his fellow creatures. To escape oppression he has a right to repress, to bind and to massacre. He is free to do what he pleases to ensure his own happiness." It is plain enough what this leads to.--But, let the consequences be what they may, whatever he writes or does, it is always in self-admiration and always in a counter sense, being as vain-glorious of his encyclopedic impotence as he is of his social mischievousness. Taking his word for it, his discoveries in Physics will render him immortal[3110]: "They will at least effect a complete transformation in Optics.... The true primitive colors were unknown before me."