Sir Humphry Davy. 221 



so soon sensible of his error, and so early confirmed in the true 

 principles of the inductive philosophy. The foregoing passage pro- 

 ceeds with the following judicious remarks. ' We are ignorant of the 

 laws of corpuscular motion ; and an immense mass of minute observ- 

 ations concerning the more complicated chemical changes must be 

 collected, probably before we shall be able to ascertain even whether 

 we are capable of discovering them. Chemistry, in its present state, 

 is simply a partial history of phenomena, consisting of many series, 

 more or less extensive, of accurately connected facts."* The per- 

 tinacity with which he afterwards maintained his opinions, particularly 

 in the controversy respecting chlorine, must inspire a greater confi- 

 dence in his conviction of their truth, on account of the frankness 

 with which, at the early period of his life now passing under review, 

 he renounced a theory he had formed respecting certain combinations 

 of light, as soon as he found it unsupported by facts. This renun- 

 ciation (the only one so far as we recollect, that he found it necessary 

 to make during his life,) followed as it was by the foregoing remarks 

 on the ' folly of hasty generahzation,' proves how early he had im- 

 bibed the love of truth, and formed the determination to surrender 

 himself to her guidance. " The admission of such inferences, he 

 observes, (speaking of recent experiments upon the production of 

 light,) would be favorable to my theory of the combinations of light ; 

 but facts have occured to me with regard to the decomposition of 

 bodies, which I have supposed to contain light, without any luminous 

 appearance. Until I have satisfactorily explained these facts by neto 

 experiments, I beg to be considered as a sceptic with regard to my own 

 particular theory of the combinations of light, and theories of light 

 in general. "f 



At the time when the volume of Researches was published, Davy 

 was only twenty years old, and had been engaged in the study of 

 chemistry only two years; yet this work immediately placed him 

 among the ablest chemists of the age. None but chemists themselves 

 can duly appreciate the difficulties which he had already mastered, 

 in having so soon acquired so great a familiarity with a science, which 

 is apt at first to confound the learner with the numberless objects and 

 facts it crowds upon his memory ; and still more, in his having so well 

 learned the practical duties of the laboratory, that he had been able 

 to perform a great number of analyses with an accuracy, that has ever 



* Researches, p. 13. ( Nicholson's Journal, Feb. 18(M). 



