August 9, 1894] 



NA TURE 



349 



less a master of experiment and expression than the late Prof. 

 Brodie. Judge of my di:appointment when I found that Brodie 

 had written no address at all. Whether that great man, knowing 

 there were belter things to do here than listen to addresses, had 

 the courage to make an innovation he thought desirable in 

 itself, or whether, as others say, he was but obeying the etiquette 

 of the Oxford professoriate — the fact remains the assembled 

 chemists went away unaddressed, and the natural spring of in- 

 spiration for the address of 1S94 is found dry at its source. Of 

 course you will say, "Why do you not follow such a good 

 example ? " I wish I had the courage. As it is, I can but 

 urge the vacuum of i860 as some excuse for the emptiness of 

 the address I now present — compelled to do so partly by the 

 force of fashion and the demands of the assistant general 

 secretary, and (shall I add?) partly by the gratihcation of hold- 

 ing forth, with a little brief authority, in my old academic home, 

 endeared to me personally by so many happy memories, and 

 hallowed in the minds of chemists by the traditionsof such great 

 achievements in the science we pursue. 



I say traditions advisedly, for the chemical achievements 

 spoken of were largely forgotten, or put on one side as guesses 

 and half-truths. No chemist here will need reminding that I 

 refer to the first school oj SiUiitifu chemistry^ the school founded 

 two centuries and a half ago by Robert Boyle with his disciples 

 Hooke and Mayow — a group whom I will venture to i.x\\ " the 

 Oxfoid school of chemisis." And now that chemists are met 

 together once more in Oxford it seemed to me not inappropriate 

 for us to consider what this school of chemists accomplished, and 

 wherein it failed, what led to the sudden growth and what to 

 the decline of chemical investigation here, and what lessons for 

 modern Oxford may be read in the history of that rise and fall. 



The intellectual awakening which followed the rediscovery 

 of the ancient world of literature gave rise to the scientific in- 

 teiri>.;alion of nature. In Italy first, and then in France, 

 England, and in Germany, the diffusion of classical learning 

 broke down the ancient barriers of restraint, and developed a 

 sjiirit of free inquiry. It was not so much tnat ignorance had 

 I'l tie dispelled, but that the righ: of search had to be established. 

 Here and there during the middle ages some man of genius 

 liad arisen — learned beyond all his contemporaries, intrepid in 

 the pursuit of truth — only to be crushed by a political and 

 mental despotism. The name of Roger Bacon arises at once 

 in our thoughts, who from his Oxford cell sent forth that great 

 appeal for experimental science that nearly converted a Pope 

 iif Rome and won three centuries for intellectual freedom. 

 IJut his labour bore no fruit. I know no better index to the 

 dominant sentiment of the time than the following words from 

 a papal rescript reproving the members of an Italian university 

 for scientific presumption : " They must be content with the 

 landmarks of science already fixed by their fathers, and have 

 due fear of the curse pronounced against him who removelh his 

 neighbour's landmark." Under such conditions no wonder 

 philosophy was at a standstill. "The same knots were tied 

 and untied; the same clouds were formed and dissipated."' 

 The cramped philosophy of the middle ages had in alchemy a 

 fitting colleague — with its mysticism, its sordid ideals, its 

 trickery, and its arrogance. The revival of learning was thus 

 an emancipation of the mind, and in the nevv freedom the 

 sciences of mechanics, physics, and phemistry arose. The first 

 necessity for progress was enlightenment, the second was ex- 

 periment ; in the year that Francis Bacon died Robert Boyle 

 was born. 



The common pursuit of experimental inquiry and the need 

 for constant criticism and discussion among its followers led to 

 the foundation of scientific societies. Such societies, which 

 have greatly influenced the progress of knowledge, sprang up 

 in Florence and Padua, in Paris and Oxford— wherever, among 

 bodies of learned men, some were found in sympathy with 

 natural philosophy. Among these associations the Philosophical 

 Society of Oxford has played no unimportant part, and, how- 

 ever much Oxford may have undervalued its work, for on: thing 

 all chemists are grateful, and Oxford herself may feel proud — 

 that here, under her influence, first grew up the idea that 

 chemistry was no mere drudge of medicine, or genii of the 

 alchemist, but a science to be studied purely for itself. 



The origin of this Oxford Society has been well told by Dr. 

 Wallis, one of its founders : — 



"About the year 1645, while I lived in London (at a time 

 when, by our civil wars, academic studies were much interrupted 

 1 Whewcll, " Hist, of Ind. Sci." 

 NO. 1293. VOL. 50] 



at both Universities), besides the conversation of eminent 

 divines, I had the opportunity of being acijuainted with divers 

 worthy persons in(|uisilive into natural philosophy, and par- 

 ticularly of what hath been called experimental philosophy. We 

 did by agreements meet weekly in London to treat and dis- 

 course of such affairs ; of which number were Dr. John Wilkins, 

 Dr. Jonathan Goddard, Dr. Ent, Dr. Merret, Mr. Samuel 

 Foster, then Professor of Astronomy in Gresham College, and. 

 Mr. Theodore Haak, and many others. 



"These meetings we held sometimes at Dr. Goddard's 

 lodgings, on occasion of his keeping an operator at his house for 

 grinding glasses for telescopes and microscopss ; sometimes at 

 a convenient place in Cheapside, and sometimes at Gresham 

 College. Oar business was (precluding mitters of theology snd 

 State affairs) 10 discourse and consider of philosophical inquiiies. 

 . . . . About the year 1648, some of our company being le- 

 moved to Oxford (first Dr. Wilkins, then I, and soon after Dr 

 Goddard), our company divided. Those in London continued 

 to meet there as before, and those of us at Oxford, with Dr. Seth 

 Ward (since Bishop of Salisbury), Dr. Ralph Bathurst, President 

 of Trinity College, Dr. Petty, Dr. Willis (an eminent physician 

 in Oxford), and divers others, continued such meetings in 

 Oxford, and brought those studies into fashion there, meeting 

 first at Dr. Petty's lodgings (in anapothecarie's house), because 

 of the convenience of inspecting drugs, and. after his removal, 

 at the lodgings of Dr. Wilkins, then Warden of Wadham 

 College, and,afterhisremovaI, at the lodgings of the Honourable 

 Mr. Robert IJoyle, then resident for divers years in Oxford." 



Robert Boyle, the youngest child of the great Earl of Cork, 

 was born at Lismore in 1626. His mother died when he was a 

 child. Always delicate, he was sent at twelve years of age with 

 a tutor to the Continent ; he remained abroad for six years. 

 He studied chiefly at Geneva and at Florence, where he read 

 the works of Galileo. Returning to England, in 1644, he busied 

 himself with chemistry at Stalbridge, a manor in Dorsetshire 

 left him by his father. On his visits to London he became one 

 of the members of the " Invisible College, ' the germ of the 

 Royal Society. " Vulcan has so bewitched me," he writes at 

 the age of twenty-three, " as to make me fancy my laboratory 

 a kind of elysium." 



Drawn to Oxford in 1654, Boyle spent here the most active 

 years of his life in experimental research. Of Boyle's scientific 

 writings much has been said in extravagant praise and 

 much in ridicule. Boerhaave wrote: "To him we owe the 

 secrets of fire, air, water, animals, vegetables, and fossils." 

 This phrase is not more grotesque than that of a recent writer, 

 who savs, "Boyle's name is identified with no great dis- 

 covery. ' Dr. Johnson has very justly remarked, in a number 

 of the Rambler : "It is well known how much of our philosophy 

 is derived from Boyle's discoveries, yet very few have read 

 the details of his experiments. His name is indeed reverenced, 

 but his works are neglected." It is, indeed, rather hard 

 to read through one of Boyle's papers, even in the abridged 

 form. Though clear, they are discursive. The writer cannot 

 rid himself entirely of the essences and qualities of the alche- 

 mists ; and it is only when we compare these records with 

 the works of Van Helmont, his immediate predecessor, that we 

 recognise the enormous advance that has been made by Boyle. 

 I must pass over his physical work on the elasticity of the air. 

 It must suffice to say that he established by most careful ex- 

 periment the law which is known by his name — that the volume 

 of a given mass of air varies inversely as the pressure upon it. 

 He determined the density of the air, and pointed out that 

 bodies altered in weight according to the varying buoyancy of 

 the atmosphere. One of his most important chemical papers — 

 certainly the one most frequently cited — is "The Sceptical 

 Chemist," published anonymously in 1661. I will attempt the 

 briefest account of it. The opening wards of the dialogue strike 

 the keynote of the whole : — 



" Notwithstanding the subtle reasoning; of the Peripatetics 

 and the pretty experiments of the Chymists, I am so diffident as 

 to think that, if neither can produce more cogent arguments 

 than are usually given, a man may reasonably doubt as to the 

 number of those material ingredients of mixed bodies which 

 some call elements and others principles." He proceeds, 

 through the mouth of one of the supposed disputants, to 

 attack the doctrine of the three elements, the tria friina oi 

 the alchemists — ^sulphur, mercury, and salt. "There are 

 some bodies," he says, " from which it lias not yet been made 

 to appear that any degree of fire can separate either salt, or 



