lOG MEMOIR OF DR. DALTON, AND 



authority, probably knew nothing of his more rational practice; 

 they evidently retrograded, but it was probably needful, in 

 order to satisfy themselves. 



A few specimens of the Stoechiometry of the period onward 

 to Boyle will be needful to explain to what a woeful state the 

 science fell ; or shall we say rather what a dreadful struggle 

 it had to come to the light ; or shall we say that it was only 

 in analogy with the general opinions of the times, and a 

 picture of the general state of mind? For the honor of 

 human nature I would prefer to say that the highest minds 

 being engaged in the cultivation of the more spiritual facul- 

 ties, in the development of the moral nature of man, in 

 struggling for freedom of body and of mind ; the lower ones 

 were engaged with science, and lived a miserable existence, 

 fed by the crusts from the table of the brighter intellects. We 

 may add also that science w^as, with many persons, as now, 

 a mode of making money only ; and many who had no love 

 for it, joined in the pursuit, and are now by us apt to be 

 confounded with true men. This explains many, but not all 

 the cases. 



Science and religion have always influenced each other, 

 and it is interesting to trace them. In the Tractatus 

 aureus, by a German philosopher, the piety is seen. In 

 making experiments, he says to every pious God-fearing 

 chemist: "Above all it is needful to be pious, to lift the 

 heart to Him, with true, ardent, and not doubtful prayer, 

 and to ask the gift from Him only."* Again, of the Quinta 

 essentia, "It is the universal and scintillating fire of the 

 light of nature, which has the celestial spirit within it animated 

 in the beginning by God, and penetrating all things, called 

 therefore, by Avicenna, the spirit of the world. For as the 

 soul is found in all the members of the human body, and 

 moves itself, so this spirit is found in all the elementary 



■ Museum Hermeticum, page 80. 



