142 MEMOIR OF DR. DALTON. AND 



CHAPTER VII. 



PHLOGISTON PERIOD AND PROGRESS OF THE BALANCE. 



In the 17th century innovations were beginning in chemistry, 

 as we have already seen, but as usual, these did not all take 

 one direction. Van Helmont put his little archaeus, a kind 

 of intelligent agent, but with less independence than that 

 of Paracelsus, into the stomach, to do the work which he 

 could find no way of accomplishing by merely physical 

 means. Thus things began a new mystical direction. Becher, 

 in the Physicae Suhterraneae, ridicules his archaeus and 

 chimeras, and the whole host of " impudent chemists" also, 

 who assert that they obtain salt, sulphur, and mercury, from all 

 bodies, even animals and vegetables. He does not hesitate 

 to call these the greatest falsehoods. He calls " elements the 

 genuine and true things of which bodies consist, and from 

 which others are made and prepared." * But as he held on 

 by the four elements, we are not able to find in him much 

 material. 



He had the merit of raising inquiry in a high degree, and 

 of bringing forward his great admirer, Stahl, who introduced 

 phlogiston. In this chapter we have a class of men who have 

 made another advance in experimenting, and whose works are 

 the first which living chemists can, without difficulty, peruse. 

 The advent of oxygen into science was preceded by a century 

 of vague prophesyings. The use of the balance was becoming 

 general, but men had no idea of the accuracy with which 

 nature weighed, although they had long used the proper 

 principle of making the earth the arbiter, by trying which 

 side of the scale she drew most willingly towards her. They 



• Phys. Sub. Lib. i., sect, iii,, cap. i., No. 12. 



