THE OTTAWA NATURALIST. 



Vol. X. OTTAWA, AUGUST, 1896. No. 5. 



POPULAR CHEMISTRY. 



Apropos of Prof. Lassar-Cohn's Lectures. 



How far one may reasonably expect the more thoughtful 

 fraction of the general public to interest itself in the methods 

 and results of chemical research, is a question that many others 

 than the writer have asked. Here is a universe of wonderful 

 completeness and of infinite extent in the midst of which man 

 finds himself; and as far as he is able to judge he is himself 

 the only conscious intelligence within this vast domain. Other 

 living beings there are, and some degree of intellectuality we 

 must grant them to possess, but in the full consciousness of an 

 individuality which feels itself distinct from the rest of creation, 

 we have a conviction that man stands alone. He finds, so far 

 as he is man in the sense in which this term contradistinguishes 

 him from the lower animals, his chief satisfaction and pleasure 

 is the activity of his mind employing itself upon the vast prob- 

 lem of this universe. He views it from different standpoints, 

 and speaks of it as material or spiritual, natural or supernatural, 

 the world of the senses, or the world of the soul, according to 

 attitude of his mind towards it. He may not hope to solve in 

 its entirety the Sphinx riddle which is thus presented to him 

 but at all moments when he knows himself to be at his best and 

 highest as a man, he feels that the only true satisfaction which 

 he may hope to attain as a thinking being is to be got from the 

 serious study of what life means. Every new relation of one 

 phase of existence to another causes, in its discovery, a thrill of 

 pleasure to him, and this, whether it be the inter-relationc of the 



