PROGRESS OF THE ARTS. 243 



the practice of arts and manufactures ; but the science of chemistry 

 owes its origin and improvement to the industry of the Saracens. 

 They," he adds, " first invented and named the alembic for the pur 

 poses of distillation, analyzed the substances of the three kingdoms o. 

 nature, tried the distinction and affinities of alkalies and acids, and con- 

 verted the poisonous minerals into soft and salutary medicines." The 

 formation and realization of the notions of analysis and of affinity, 

 were important steps in chemical science, which, as I shall hereafter 

 endeavor to show, it remained for the chemists of Europe to make at 

 a much later period. If the Arabians had done this, they might with 

 iustice have been called the authors of the science of chemistry ; but 

 no doctrines can be adduced from their works which give them any 

 title to this eminent distinction. Their claims are dissipated at once 

 by the application of the maxim above stated. What analysis of theirs 

 tended to establish any received principle of chemistry? What true 

 doctrine concerning the differences and affinities of acids and alkalies 

 did they teach ? We need not wonder if Gibbon, whose views of the 

 boundaries of scientific chemistry were probably very wide and indis- 

 tinct, could include the arts of the Arabians within its domain ; but 

 they cannot pass the frontier of science if philosophically defined, and 

 steadily guarded. 



The judgment which we are thus led to form respecting the chemi- 

 cal knowledge of the middle ages, and of the Arabians in particular, 

 may serve to measure the condition of science in other departments ; 

 for chemistry has justly been considered one of their strongest points. 

 In botony, anatomy, zoology, optics, acoustics, we have still the same 

 observations to make, that the steps in science which, in the order of 

 progress, next followed what the Greeks had done, were left for the 

 Europeans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The merits and 

 advances of the Arabian philosophers in astronomy and pure mathe- 

 matics, we have already described. 



3. Experimental Philosophy of the Arabians. The estimate to which 

 we have thus been led, of the scientific merits of the learned men of 

 the middle ages, is much less exalted than that which has been formed 

 by many writers ; and, among the rest, by some of our own time. But 

 I am persuaded that any attempt to answer the questions just asked, 

 will expose the untenable nature of the higher claims which have been 

 advanced in favor of the Arabians. We can deliver no just decision, 

 except we will consent to use the terms of science in a strict and poe 

 cise sense : and if we do this, we shall find little, either in the particu- 



