YULE FIRES 345 



Nor did they yield their theory when Lavoisier 

 claimed to disprove it by burning phosphorus in 

 oxygen and weighing the result, which was 

 heavier than the phosphorus had been. There- 

 upon the world derided the alchemists and lauded 

 Lavoisier whose experiments laid the founda- 

 tion for the intricate science of modern chem- 

 istry. For all that, science gives us the truth 

 only from one angle and the science of one age 

 is often disproved by the science of the next. 

 Modern chemists may agree on what happens 

 when phosphorus burns, but many a theory of 

 Lavoisier's day has been disproved in its turn. 

 A thousand scientists have declared flying im- 

 possible to man, yet today men fly. Lavoisier 

 was right, no doubt. Combustion is the com- 

 bination of an element with oxygen. He proved 

 that with his chemist's balance. Yet how did he 

 prove that some imponderable element does not 

 leap from wood in flame ? As well say that when 

 a man dies the spirit has not left the body be- 

 cause he weighs the same. Watching the falling 

 embers of the Yule log leap into flames before 

 they turn gray, I am apt to think that the in- 

 tuition of the alchemists touched a truth that the 

 chemical apparatus missed. You cannot meas- 



