NEGLECT OF CHEMISTRY BY BOTANISTS. 35 



All this is due to two causes, which we shall now 

 consider. 



One is, that in botany the talent and labour of 

 inquirers has been wholly spent in the examination 

 of form and structure : chemistry and physics have 

 not been allowed to sit in council upon the expla- 

 nation of the most simple processes ; their expe- 

 rience and their laws have not been employed, 

 though the most powerful means of help in the 

 acquirement of true knowledge. They have not 

 been used, because their study has been neglected. 



All discoveries in physics and in chemistry, all 

 explanations of chemists, must remain without 

 fruit and useless, because, even to the great leaders 

 in physiology, carbonic acid, ammonia, acids, and 

 bases, are sounds without meaning, words without 

 sense, terms of an unknown language, which 

 awaken no thoughts and no associations. They 

 treat these sciences like the vulgar, who despise 

 a foreign literature in exact proportion to their 

 ignorance of it ; since even when they have had 

 some acquaintance with them, they have not under- 

 stood their spirit and application. 



Physiologists reject the aid of chemistry in their 

 inquiry into the secrets of vitality, although it alone 

 could guide them in the true path ; they reject 

 chemistry, because in its pursuit of knowledge it 

 destroys the subjects of its investigation ; but they 

 forget that the knife of the anatomist must dis- 

 member the body, and destroy its organs, if an 



D 2 



