10 INTRODUCTION. 



longings or passions of the great masses of the 

 human family. Yet there were a few chemists at 

 different times fully possessed with this folly also, 

 and ardently engaged in its pursuit. The whole 

 idea of the alcahest is overturned by a very 

 simple consideration which has been frequently 

 well put. If an universal solvent were possible, 

 what vessel could retain for an instant such a 

 fluid? 



Nothing could have been more truly injurious 

 to the true advancement of the science of 

 chemistry than the prevalence of these three 

 dreams, and particularly of the first of them. 

 So long as the philosophers thought they had a 

 chance of opening, so to speak, a vein of gold in 

 their laboratories, so long they neglected the 

 truly useful and lucrative application of the 

 powers of chemistry to common manufactures, 

 and so long also they remained indifferent to the 

 discovery of any of the principles and laws of the 

 science. Thus while much was known about 

 chemical -substances, nothing was known about 

 what is termed chemical philosophy, that is, that 

 part of the science of chemistry which teaches 

 us the laws and governing principles of these 

 substances. 



It was about the middle of the seventeenth 

 century, a period which was like the very birth- 

 time of all scientific knowledge, that, recognising 

 at length the absurdities of their predecessors, 

 philosophers began to lay the foundations of that 

 noble system of chemistry, which is now at once 

 the offspring, the pride, and the triumph of expe- 

 rimental philosophy. The principles laid down in 

 the celebrated work, called Novuni Organum, of 



