The elements that for simplicity we call "true" firmly occupy their places in the periodic table of the elements. By contrast, there are the elements that we call "false." These elements, difficult to systematize, occupied, for time periods more or less extended, a place within the periodic classification. Every desire has its own plan, and every plan its own point of departure and arrival. Committed to making some sense out of the incessant coupling of molecules that combine and break up, chemists have tended to name the fundamental substances of matter, the elements, so that their research might be better remembered by posterity and confer on their deeds a kind of human immortality.
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