214 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1916. 



verse. They speculated intelligently, although often with childlike 

 naivete, concerning energy and the structure of matter, but they 

 forebore to test their speculations by experiment. They builded 

 better than they knew ; their ancient atomic hypothesis, ardently sup- 

 ported but inadequately applied two thousand years ago, now finds 

 itself installed in the innermost recesses of chemical theory. Inde- 

 pendently, ancient artisans and medieval alchemists, dealing with the 

 mysterious actual behavior of things, acquired valuable acquaintance 

 with simple chemical processes. After much chemical knowledge of 

 facts had been gained alchemy sought the aid of philosophy. Thus 

 little by little order was brought into the chaos of scattered expe- 

 rience. But strictly chemical knowledge alone was inadequate to 

 solve the cosmic riddle ; it had to be supplemented by knowledge of 

 heat and electricity — agencies which produce profound alterations in 

 the chemical nature of substances. Thus the study of physics was 

 combined with that of chemistry. Again, since mathematical gen- 

 eralization is essential to the study of physics, this discipline also 

 was of necessity added to the others. All these powerful tools taken 

 together having failed to penetrate to the ultimate essence of things, 

 imagination is invoked, and physiochemical dreams to-day conceive 

 a mechanism of infinitesimal entities far beyond our most searching 

 powers of direct observation. 



Chemistry has not grown spontaneously to its present estate ; it is 

 a product of human mentality. The science which we know to-day 

 is but an echo of the eternal and incomprehensible "music of the 

 spheres " as heard and recorded by the minds of individual men. Im- 

 personal and objective although matter and energy may be, their 

 appreciation by man involves much that is subjective. The history 

 of science, like all the rest of human history, is, as Emerson said, 

 " the biography of a few stout and earnest persons." 



Robert Boyle, self-styled " the skeptical chymist," a gentle spirit 

 skeptical Only of the false and vain, pure-minded aristocrat in an age 

 of corruption; Mildiail Lomonosoff, poet, philosopher, philologist, 

 and scientific seer, far outstripping contemporary understanding; 

 Antoine Lavoisier, whose clear mind first taught man to compre- 

 hend, after thousands of years, the mighty stolen gift of Prome- 

 theus ; John Dalton, Quaker peasant, who found convincing chemical 

 evidence for the ancient atomic hypothesis; Michael Faraday, a 

 blacksmith's son, whose peerless insight and extraordinary genius 

 in experiment yielded theoretical and practical fruits beyond the 

 world's most daring dreams — these men and a few score others are 

 the basis of the history of chemistry. The science has not come into 

 being, Minerva-like, full-grown from the brain of Jove; she has 

 been bom of human travail, nursed and nourished from feeble in- 



