300 DISCOURSE ON THE STUDY 



merous facts, all of them presenting considerable 

 intrinsic interest, has sufficed, in most instances, to 

 lead, by a clear and direct road, to its highest laws 

 yet known. But, on the other hand, these laws, 

 when stated, are not yet fully sufficient to lead us, 

 except in very limited cases, to a deductive know- 

 ledge of particulars never before examined, at least, 

 not without great caution, and constant appeal to 

 experiment as a check on our reasoning ; so that we 

 are justified in regarding the axioms of chemistry, 

 the true handles of deductive reasoning, as still un- 

 known, and, perhaps, likely long to remain so. This 

 is no fault of its cultivators, who have comprised in 

 their list the highest and most varied talents and 

 industry, but of the inherent complexity of the 

 subject, and the infinite multitude of causes which 

 are concerned in the production of every, even the 

 simplest, chemical phenomenon. 



(336.) The history of chemistry (on which, however, 

 we are not about to enlarge,) is one of great interest 

 to those who delight to trace the steps by which 

 mankind advance to the discovery of truth through 

 a series of mistakes and failures. It may be divided, 

 1st, into the period of the alchemists, a lamentable 

 epoch in the annals of intellectual wandering; 2dly, 

 that of the phlogistic doctrines of Beccher and Stahl, 

 in which, as if to prove the perversity of the human 

 mind, of two possible roads the wrong was chosen ; 

 and a theory obtained universal credence on the 

 strength of an induction, valid as such, but wrongly 

 interpreted, which is negatived, in every instance, 

 by an appeal to the balance. This, too, happened, 

 not by reason of unlucky coincidences, or individual 



