ARE THE ELEMENTS TRAN SMUT ABLE f 39 



chemical change'; on page 6, 'Molecules consisting of atoms of the 

 same kind are termed elementary molecules, and substances whose 

 molecules are so constituted are known as elements.' The numbers of 

 the pages on which these statements occur are also significant. This 

 reminds one of the methods of the old Greek philosophers, who pre- 

 tended to solve all questions of science by pure deduction, positing 

 some hypothesis, and then developing everything else by meditation in 

 their closets, disdaining to disturb the order of their thoughts by ex- 

 periments. But it is unworthy of the present age of inductive science, 

 wherein every thought has, or should have, experimental evidence as 

 its starting point. It can not be said that this particular author has 

 made a false statement, but he has left the subject incomplete; cau- 

 tiously reserving a loophole for his own escape, he fairly traps his 

 readers. For it is inevitable that, with such didactic phraseology, and 

 without having his attention called to the hypothetical, the tentative, 

 nature of these definitions, the student should become convinced that 

 the most fundamental facts of chemistry are that there are about 

 eighty substances so simple that they can never be broken up into 

 simpler things, and that all substances are composed of ultimate par- 

 ticles, called atoms, eternally indivisible. 



A student started out with this hodgepodge of fact and theory 

 thoroughly implanted in his mind as the basis for all his future knowl- 

 edge is sadly handicapped, indeed he is intellectually maimed, and it 

 may take him years to overcome the habit of confusing fact and theory, 

 and to learn how to think straight; perhaps he never succeeds in over- 

 coming it. This confusing of facts with theories is a vicious habit, 

 which grows till it colors all one's thoughts, hinders the free play of 

 the intellect, diminishes the power of right judgment and starts the 

 ossification of the wits even before the age set by Dr. Osier. 



It is not necessary to consider a student of chemistry as an infant 

 in arms to be fed on predigested food. He may be assumed to have a 

 digestive apparatus of his own. Give him the benefit of any doubt 

 and ascribe to him at least a dawning intelligence, which, properly 

 stimulated, may some day shed some light of its own. It is the char- 

 acteristic course of a lazy teacher, and one pleasing to lazy students as 

 well, to supply a lot of personal opinions in the shape of cut and dried 

 definitions, so easy to memorize and, unfortunately, so hard to forget; 

 phrases which do not require the intellect to bestir itself and exercise 

 its faculty of criticism, to pass judgment for itself between alternative 

 or conflicting views. Strictly speaking, nothing should be presented 

 in the form of a definition except what is, in itself, a statement of 

 experimental facts, as, for instance, we describe or define a unit of 

 measurement in terms of other units. When dealing with a subject 

 where more than one opinion is permissible, all should be stated, or at 



