Str Humphry Davy. 291 
so soon sensible of his error, and so early confirmed in the true 
principles of the inductive philosophy. ‘The foregoing passage pro- 
ceeds with the following judicious remarks. ‘ We are ignorant of the 
laws of corpuscular motion ; and an immense mass of minute observ- 
ations concerning the more complicated chemical changes must be 
collected, probably before we shall be able to ascertain even whether 
we are capable of discovering them. Chemistry, in its present state, 
is simply a partial history of phenomena, consisting of many series, 
more or less extensive, of accurately connected facts.”* The per- 
tinacity with which he afterwards maintained his opinions, particularly 
in the controversy respecting chlorine, must inspire a greater confi- 
dence in his conviction of their truth, on account of the frankness 
with which, at the early period of his life now passing under review, 
he renounced a theory he had formed respecting certain combinations 
of light, as soon as he found it unsupported by facts. This renun- 
ciation (the only one so far as we recollect, that he found it necessary 
to make during his life,) followed as it was by the foregoing remarks 
on the ‘folly of hasty generalization,’ proves how early he had im- 
bibed the love of truth, and formed the determination to surrender 
~ himself to her guidance. “'The admission of such inferences, he 
particular theory of the combinations of light, and theories of light 
in general.” . ee eer 
‘At the time when the volume of Researches was published, Davy 
was only twenty years old, and had been engaged in the study of 
chemistry only two years; yet this work immediately placed him 
among the ablest chemists of the age. None but chemists themselves 
can duly appreciate the difficulties which he had already mastered, 
in having so soon acquired so great a familiarity with a science, which 
is apt at first to confound the learner with the numberless objects, and 
facts it crowds upon his memory ; and still more, in his having so well 
learned the practical duties of the laboratory, that he had been able 
to perform a great number of analyses with an accuracy, that has ever 
* Researches, p. 13. } Nicholson’s Journal, Feb. 1800. 
