Oct. 3, 1 8 72 J 



NATURE 



463 



THE BIRTH OF CHE^HSTRY 

 I. 

 liulloH — ./ iicknt Sckiicc — Origin of Clicmistry — ■Derivation 

 the Name — Definilioiis of Chemical Science — Early Ideas 

 rdiitivc to the Formation of the World. 



"T^HE history of a natural science resembles in many respects 

 -'■ the history of a nation. In each instance the object is first 

 to obtain a knowledge of causes, then to frame laws. The first 

 are tliose causes which most promote the well-being of llie nation, 

 the second those causes which produce tlie phenomena of the 

 Universe. In each instance we start with an absence of all law, 

 and we may observe the slow efforts of the human mind to trace 

 each effect to its proper cause, to group together causes, and finally 

 to connect them by one bond. The main difference is this, that 

 in the case of the nation man has to deal with laws which must 

 be founded upon a just study and close observance of every 

 phis'; of that particular community, influenced as it is by num- 

 berless external causes, such as race, climate, religion, habit of 

 thought, tradition ; while in the case of the science he has to 

 evolve pre-existent laws, also by the close obser\-ance of facts, 

 which are hidden from him by the complex mechanism of nature. 

 M. Taine would tell us that the laws which influence the develop- 

 ment of peoples are just as absolute, definite, and pre-existent, as 

 those which govern the affairs of nature ; but we are quite tlis- 

 inclined to admit this, even in regard to one particular race, in 

 one particular locality. In both histories we have similar forms 

 of government, similar assemblies of lawgivers; we have our 

 aristocracies, oligarchies, democracies, repubhcs : we have at 

 some period or other Conservatives and Liberals of every shade, 

 We know not what Conservative rule can compare with the 

 dominance of the science of .\ristotle for twenty centuries, and 

 we cannot be too ready to welcome the Liberal-conservative era 

 of Copernicus and Giordano Bruno, the Liberal era commenced 

 by Galileo and Francis Bacon, which by easy stages is passing, 

 if it has not passed, into the right Radical era of modern scientific 

 thought. The " Republic of Learning'' is no empty phrase. 



No'one would venture to deny the value of a knowledge of 

 the history of nations, and we are inclined to believe that the 

 history of the natural sciences is not without its uses. It is 

 neglected because during the last century new discoveries have 

 quickly succeeded each other, old sciences have augmented, 

 while rew sciences have arisen ; in fact, the progress of science 

 has been so extraordinarily rapid that we have scarcely time to 

 turn aside and look at its past history ; the present is sufficient for 

 us, and if wx once get out of the main current of thought we 

 have difliculty in regaining lost ground. Vet we may no more 

 forget that we owe our present wise laws and great constitutional 

 system to the labours of ten centuries of men, than that our 

 science of to-day represents the accumulation of the scientific 

 thought of twice ten centuries. Intellectual revolutions have 

 not been less frequent than social revolutions, nor battles of the 

 pen than battles of the sword ; the crash of a fallen philosophy 

 has often been louder than that of a fallen throne ; the wail of 

 the last Phlogistians rent the heavens ; the Aristotelian physics 

 died with groanings and gaspings and a discoloured visage. 



In tracing the history of a science, we are first led to 

 inquire whether the Ancients possessed any knowledge of 

 it, and whether it originated among them. Now the An- 

 cients made but little progress in any of the natural sciences. 

 They divided all human knowledge into three parts : Logic, 

 or mental philosophy ; Physics, or natural philosophy ; 

 Ethics, or moral philosophy. Some placed logic first, some 

 ethics, but no one physics. Philosophy was compared to an 

 egg— logic the shell, physics the white, ethics the yolk ; or, 

 again, it was compared to a living creature — logic the bones, 

 physics the flesh, ethics the soul. Plato sejiarates logic as the 

 knowledge of the immutable, from physics the knowledge of the 

 mutable. The Cynics sought a complete freedom from any 

 object or aim in life, and renounced .all science. Sokrates aimed 

 at logical definition, and affirmed that the true nature of external 

 objects can be discovered by thought without observation. The 

 knowledge of one's self (71/wOi nuavriv) is the true object and aim 

 of all philosophy. Knowledge obtained from external sources 

 is worthless ; there is nothing to be learned from fields and trees. 

 A certain philosopher is said on this principle to have put his 

 eyes out, in order that his mind might not be influenced by ex- 

 ternal objects, and might be left to pure contemplation. (How 

 curiously this contrasts with the plaint of G.alileo just before his 



death, "Proh dolor ! the sight of my right eye, that eye whose 

 labours, I dare say it, have had such glorious results, is for ever 

 lost. That of the left, which was and is imperfect, is rendered 

 null by a continu.il weeping.") Others of the ancients allowfil 

 that geometry might be employed for the measurement of land, 

 and astronomy cultivated so far as it might bo of use to sailors, 

 but on no account as serious subjects of mental occupation. 



Thus it happened that natural science made but little progress 

 among the ancients ; thus it happens that a schoolboy of twelve 

 knows more about earth, and fire, and water, than was dreamt 

 of in the philosophies of the greatest thinkers of antiquity. Let 

 us, however, give them their due ; let us confess that Plato 

 possessed the "finest of hum.an intellects, exercising boundles; 

 dominion over the finest of human languages ;" that Aristotle 

 was the greatest genius the world has ever seen ; that as pure 

 intellectual evolutions they have h.anded down to us a ma^s of 

 grand philosophy; ten thousand noble efforts of the human spirit. 

 Everything favoured the exercise of the unaided intellect, while 

 it is hard to estimate the difficulties which presented them- 

 selves in the investigation of nature. At one period it was con- 

 sidered impious to attempt to explain the manifestations of the 

 gods. There was an outcry in Athens, a popular demonstration, 

 when the thunderbolts of Zeus v/ere referred to common fire pro- 

 duced by the collision of clouds. The feeling was of the same 

 nature as that conveyed by Campbell's stanza : — 



When Science from Creation's face 

 Encliantment's veil willidraws. 



What lovely visions yield their place 

 To cold material laws ! 

 only the feeling existed in an intensified form, for here the first 

 of the gods was derided — the Olympian Zeus, Lord of the Air, 

 he who rides upon the storm, and hurls the thunderbolt. For 

 a length of time, therefore, any investigation of nature was im- 

 possible for religious reasons. Men were to worship nature, to 

 be filled with awe and wonder — SeitnSuifxoi'ia — in presence of great 

 natural phenomena, but not to inquire too closely into their 

 causes. Twenty centuries later the Doctors of Salamanca who 

 interrogated Columbus, the Inquisitors of the .Sacred College who 

 examined Galileo, upheld the same old doctrines, albeit the old 

 gods had passed away. But the investigation of nature 

 was impossit)le among the Greeks ; their capabilities were 

 very limited, they had no instruments for observations or experi- 

 ments of any kind, neither had they the faculty of observation ; 

 their minds were untutored in that particular direction. Then 

 they had to contend against their own particular habit of thought, 

 the extreme tendency to concretion, to hasty generalisation from 

 purely mental premisses ; or if an observation had been made, 

 a broad general law was deduced from it without further obser- 

 vation. So also the Chaldxans and Parsishad to contend against 

 the mysticism, the astrology, and magic, which originated anion;; 

 them ; and the ancient Hindu was so given to extreme abstrac 

 tion, and to the evolution of all manner of strange metaphysicf 1 

 dogmas, that we could scarcely look for much science from an 

 Eastern source. Egyptian learning was monopolised by th- 

 priests, and they so wove together the real and the unreal, and 

 were so secret withal in their actions, that although much of the 

 Greek learning came direct from Egypt, we cannot trace it to iN 

 direct source, or point to one Egyptian writer on philosophy. 

 The Greeks, too, received much from the Phoenicians ; but hei • 

 also we find no record. We will presently inquire more ful!_,' 

 into the exact amount of science possessed by the ancients. 



We have chosen for our historical sui-vey one of the oldest of the 

 natural sciences, for obvious reasons, the chief being that it wi 1 

 enable us to observe more minutely the early thoughts of ancier.t 

 peoples in regard to certain phenomena of nature. The science 

 of chemistry does not owe its existence to any one people, or t ■ 

 any sudden process of development. The basis of the edifice i ■ 

 sunk deep in Eastern soil ; the time when the foundation stor e 

 was laid is too remote to be even suggested ; the w.alls were 

 slowly and laboriously raised during the Middle Ages, and wen' 

 completed by Lavoisier, Black, and Priestley; the men of our 

 day are working at the roof We neither hold with M. Goguc! 

 that Moses possessed considerable knowledge of chemistiy, 

 because he dissolved the golden calf, nor with M. Wuitz, when 

 he says "La chimie est une science Francaise. EUe fut in- 

 stituee par Lavoisier d'immoi telle memoiie. " Chemistry was 

 not a science until long after the time of Moses ; it was a science 

 long be.rore the time of Lavoisier. We wonder what Dr. Her- 

 mann Boerhaave of Leyden (whose large quarto " Elementa 

 Chemice" was published in 1732, nine years before the birth of 

 Lavoisier), would say to the proposition of M. Wurtz. Short of 



