526 
nent for their dependence on experiment. 
This difference in methods of investigation 
between the former and the two latter sci- 
ences is a difference imposed by the circum- 
stances that astronomy deals chiefly with 
objects at long range while chemistry and 
physics are concerned with objects near at 
hand. It seems not a little singular, how- 
ever, at first thought, that progress in the 
development of knowledge concerning the 
behavior of distant bodies should have been 
almost as rapid up to the present time as 
the development of knowledge concerning 
bodies much more familiar and accessible 
to us. 
Chemistry and physics, like astronomy, 
had their forerunners in mythological follies 
and extravagances. Semi-civilized and civ- 
ilized man required a long time after he 
had learned how to talk and to write well, 
after he had founded states and constructed 
systems of philosophy and religion, before 
he could reason rationally and successfully 
with respect to the commonest material 
things about him. Thus, chemistry was 
long obscured by merely verbal specula- 
tions on the ‘ four elements, earth, air, fire 
and water’ or on the ‘ three elements, salt, 
sulphur and mercury’; while the begin- 
nings of physics were perhaps even more 
clouded by the fantastic unrealities of fer- 
tile but unchecked imaginations. 
But man early learned to measure the 
value of chemistry by the ‘ gold standard.’ 
It is hinted, in fact, though without ade- 
quate evidence, that the Golden Fleece of 
the Argonautic expedition was a manuscript 
containing valuable secrets of the chemist’s 
art; and Suidas, of the eleventh century, 
to whom the word chemistry is attributed, 
relates that Diocletian, fearing that the 
Egyptians, by reason of their knowledge, 
might become rich and restive, ordered, in 
true Roman fashion, that their books on 
chemistry should be burned. The thirst 
for gold assisted also in the development of 
SCIENCE. 
(N.S. Vou. XIII. No. 327. 
alchemy, which flourished from the eleventh 
to the fifteenth century especially, and has 
had not a few adherents, it would seem, 
during all the centuries down to and includ- 
ing the one just past. The philosopher’s 
stone was almost universally believed to be 
areal agent in medieval times; and this 
strange fiction also has its survivals in the 
‘mad stones,’ ‘ moon stones,’ ‘lucky stones,’ 
and other ‘charms’ whose use even at the 
present time is not uncommonly justified 
by the wise saying that ‘there may be 
something in them.’ 
The difficulty in getting the human mind 
started with the elements of physical 
science is well illustrated, likewise, by the 
superstitious rubbish that encumbered the 
early progress of knowledge concerning 
magnets. They were endowed with imag- 
inary qualities far more wonderful than 
subsequent observation and experiment 
have disclosed. It was believed, for ex- 
ample, that they would cause some diseases 
and cure others; that they were effective as 
love philters; that they would lose their 
properties when rubbed with garlic (which 
seems not so unlikely), but that a bath in 
goat’s blood would readily counteract this 
destructive effect. And in this case, also, 
as with alchemy and the philosopher’s 
stone, it is to be noted that such crude no- 
tions of the phenomena of matter find their 
survivals at the present day in a wide ac- 
ceptance of the unverified efficacy of 
‘magnetic healers’ and ‘electric belts,’ 
and in the ease with which capitalists can 
be persuaded to invest in a ‘ Keely motor’ 
or in anything that promises the marvelous. 
With the decline of alchemy the field 
for chemistry shifted somewhat. Not un- 
naturally, since most chemists were also 
physicians in those days, a knowledge of 
the chemical properties of substances came 
to occupy a prominent place in the physi- 
cian’s art. Thus Paracelsus in the six- 
teenth century, cutting loose from the 
