4 ESSAYS BIOGRAPHICAL AND CHEMICAL 



seeing that divisibility is the essential property of 

 quantity.' The logic is unanswerable, but we are left 

 where we were. 



Let us next see what ideas were held by Du Clos, 

 physician to Louis xiv., on the cause of the solidification 

 of liquids. These are his memorable words : 



' The reason of the concretion of liquids is obviously 

 dryness ; for this quality, being the opposite of moistness, 

 which renders bodies liquid, may well produce an effect 

 opposite to that produced by the latter, to wit, the 

 concretion of liquids.' Again, we have not gained much 

 information by the profound utterance. 



One more quotation. It is from a work by Jean Rey, 

 Doctor of Medicine, published in 1630, entitled, 'On an 

 Inquiry wherefore Tin and Lead increase in Weight on 

 Calcination.' He is arguing that 'Nature abhors a 

 vacuum,' a favourite thesis in former days. ' It is quite 

 certain that in the bounds of nature, a vacuum, which 

 is nothing, can find no place. There is no power in 

 Nature from which nothing could have made the universe, 

 and none which could reduce the universe to nothing : 

 that requires the same virtue. Now the matter would 

 be otherwise if there could be a vacuum. For if it could 

 be here, it could also be there ; and being here and there, 

 why not elsewhere ? and why not everywhere ? Thus the 

 universe could reach annihilation by its own forces ; but 

 to Him alone who could make it is due the glory of 

 compassing its destruction.' 



We must remember, therefore, in studying the early 

 history of chemistry, that not only were facts, familiar to 

 many of us now, wholly unknown ; but we must also bear 

 in mind that the point of view from which the early 

 chemists surveyed the phenomena of nature was entirely 

 different from that to which we are now accustomed. 

 It is evident, from the examples quoted, which are not 



