2 Dr. E. J. Mills on the First Principles of Chemistry. 



human reason will be, when, having traversed the whole cycle 

 of thought, she returns — enriched only with a deeper insight 

 and a clearer consciousness — to be merged in the glorious in- 

 nocence of her primitive and inspired incunabula." The same 

 thought, in its moral aspect, constitutes the lesson of the 

 Prodigal Son *. The advancement of science, the excursus of 

 the soul, are popularly represented as straight lines ; on the 

 contrary, they are returning curves. " The primitive articles 

 of all thought, the seminal principles of all reason, the neces- 

 sary constituents of all knowledge, the keys of all truth, lie at 

 first buried under our very feet ; but, as yet, we are not priv 

 leged to find them. We must first circumnavigate the globe ; 

 the whole world of speculation must be traversed by our weary 

 feet. Hence every step forward carries us only further and 

 further from the mark. Ere long the elements of truth — all 

 that we are indistinctly looking for — lie in the far distant rear, 

 while we vainly think that we behold them glimmering on the 

 horizon in our front. We have left them behind us, though 

 we knew it not — like decaying camp-fires, like deserted house- 

 hold gods." " The intellectual, like the physical world, is a 

 round ; and at the moment when the wanderer imagines him- 

 self furthest from the house of humanity, he will find himself 

 at home. He has revolved to the spot of his nativity. He is 

 again surrounded by the old familiar things. But familiarity 

 has been converted into insight ; the toils of speculation have 

 made him strong, and the results of speculation have made 

 him wise"t (ibid. pp. 10, 11). 



(2) The difficulty of the investigation, however, is capable 

 of large increase from special conditions. Consider the case 

 of chemistry. Detail has been added to detail, condrete result 

 to concrete result, during an enormous interval of time ; and 

 the pure jewels of the science lie deep under a roadway, which 

 has been hardened by the traffic and elevated by the rubbish 

 of at least two thousand years. The ideal reformer who would 

 disinter them must consecrate himself to the task, and live to 

 universals ; he must wrench himself from contemporary pre- 

 judices and associations, and, regarding each fact and theory in 



* Trench (Notes on the Parables, 1870, pp. 387, 388) supposes, in ac- 

 cordance with the common interpretation, that the " younger son " is prin- 

 cipally intended to illustrate the sin of desiring spiritual independence. 

 The whole meaning turns upon the words Els eavrov Se e\6a>v (But when 

 he came to himself), the attainment of ideal independence by way of ex- 

 periment being the very point of the story. 



t Compare also Mill on Utilitarianism, p. 2 (1863) :— " The truths 

 which are ultimately accepted as the first principles of a science are really 

 the last results of metaphysical analysis, practised on the elementary no- 

 tions with which the science is conversant." 



