190 The English School [lect. 



nearly a hundred years after Stahl until Lavoisier overthrew 

 the theory by proving that in combustion a body suffered not 

 loss but gain : the metal burnt into a metallic oxide increased 

 in weight. This is what Mayow said more than a hundred 

 years before Lavoisier, many years before Stahl : 



" Nor must the following point be passed over, that anti- 

 "monium burned by the sun's rays (collected by a burning- 

 " glass) increases considerably in weight ; as may be proved by 

 " experiment {i.e. by actual weighing). Now we can hardly 

 " conceive that the increase of weight of the antimonium arises 

 " from anything else than from the igneo-aereal particles in- 

 serted into it during the calcination." 



What a zigzag path, how unlike a straight line, is man's 

 progress in search of truth. Here is Mayow reaching a point 

 far ahead, and Boyle a little later had grasped the same fact ; 

 Stahl drags, or seems to drag, the whole world of thought 

 back; and more than a hundred years afterwards Lavoisier 

 reaches the same point as Mayow. How true it is that the 

 value of a truth is not absolute ; there is a time and a place 

 for everything, including a new truth. If a discovery is made 

 before its time, it withers up barren, without progeny, as did 

 Mayovv's. 



Having thus developed his views as to the nature of com- 

 bustion Mayow went on to identify burning and breathing. 

 Both, he said, consist in the consumption of the igneo-aereal 

 particles of the air: 



" If a small animal and a lighted candle be shut up in the 

 " same vessel, the entrance into which of air from without be 

 " prevented, you will see in a short time the candle go out ; nor 

 " will the animal long survive its funeral torch. Indeed I have 

 "found by observation that an animal shut up in a flask 

 " together with a candle will continue to breathe for not much 

 " more than half the time than it otherwise would, that is, 

 "without the candle. 



" Nor is it to be supposed that the animal in such a case is 

 "suffocated by the smoke of the candle, since if the flame be 

 "supplied by the burning of spirits of wine no smoke is pro- 

 " duced (and yet the animal dies) ; moreover when a candle is 



