328 
the view of things referred to : “ La chimie cFaujourdhui est 
la chimie des choses qui n’existent pas.” We can no longer 
doubt the real existence of ethyl, and methyl, for instance 
(Note B) ; nor can we doubt that both are products of the 
same infinite Wisdom, though one of these be through its 
abuse, relegated by certain persons to the kingdom of darkness. 
Unlike phlogiston, these compound elements may be. said to be 
fairly demonstrated as existing in reality, and not merely in 
the imagination of the theorists. 
10. When such a theory is found useful in a thousand ways, 
when missing links are established through its agency, and its 
lights are confirmed by the test of experience, it seems suffi- 
ciently established to take its place among the most important 
discoveries of mankind. What, indeed, can be a greater triumph 
for the Baconian school of philosophy* than to show that the 
labours of a few microscopic chemists, of men whose ideas 
might be supposed to be in a manner limited to the compara- 
tively narrow field which their researches embraced, have done 
more towards the elucidation of one of the most abstruse 
questions on which the human mind can be engaged than was 
effected by the profoundest intellects of the ages that preceded, 
furnished with all the learning of the times in which they 
flourished, and inured to habits of abstract and subtle disquisi- 
tion? (Note C.) 
11. Although not insensible to the difficulties involved, I still 
accept as true and proven science the Atomic Theory, believing 
with Professor Canizzaro that “ the existing theory of mole- 
cules and atoms is but the crowning of the edifice whose 
foundations were laid by the chemist of Manchester.” I notice 
with much pleasure that this learned Professor pressed upon the 
Chemical Society the importance of the recognition of this view 
of the subject. In the Faraday lecture, delivered before the 
Society on May 30, 1872, whilst adverting to the “ complete 
transformation through which our science is passing/* he recalls 
the minds of his audience to the era of which we have been 
thinking. “ Go back,” he says, “ to the times of Dalton, and 
read, in the history of chemistry by Thomas Thomson, the con- 
fession by that chemist of the effect produced on his own mind 
by the explanation of the Atomic Theory which Dalton gave 
him in the course of a short conversation. ‘ I was enchanted/ he 
says, f with the new light which immediately burst upon my 
mind, and I saw at a glance the immense importance of such a 
theory. 5 55 
* Professor Daubeny, Introduction to the Atomic T'heonj, p. 3. 
