104 GERMAN SCIENCE 



return. Each word of his carried instruction, every intonation 

 of his voice bespoke regard ; his approval was a mark of 

 honour, and of whatever else we might be proud, our greatest 

 pride was in having him for a master.' 



Liebig was also a great popularizer of science. His ' Letters 

 on Chemistry', originally contributed to a newspaper and 

 ultimately collected in a volume, probably did more to extend 

 a knowledge of the meaning and possibilities of chemistry 

 among the intelligent public of Germany than anything that 

 has appeared before or since. They dissipated the notion, 

 still lingeriug so strongly and persistently in this country, 

 that chemistry is a remote and mysterious study, which, except 

 in relation to drugs and the making of analyses, has little to 

 yield to material needs and nothing to touch the finer instincts 

 of humanity. 



I think you will understand how the influence of Liebig 

 and his pupils served to permeate Germany with a real sense 

 of the interest and importance of chemical science. Centres 

 of experimental science arose everywhere ; the universities 

 reformed their ways. Those of his pupils who became the 

 heads of industrial concerns found themselves, as he said, with 

 a new point of view, a new attitude of mind, with new weapons, 

 with new means of progress. They came to see that things 

 did not merely happen, that there were unseen but discoverable 

 causes, that a knowledge of causes gave the power of control, 

 of variation, of improvement, of initiation. They had gained 

 all this, not by the narrow pursuit of specialized know- 

 ledge, but by whole-hearted and disinterested study in 

 whatever corner of the unknown they were brought by the 

 master mind of a true philosopher to trace the operation of 

 natural laws and to carry their quest to the utmost inwardness 

 of things. 



It was this conception of science that got about in educated 

 Germany as it has never done in any other country, and it is 



