LIVERPOOL CHEMISTS’ ASSOCIATION. 
523 
of endless noise, there are your true alchemists, who, if they received an order to supply 
the universe with gold coronets, and necklaces of prismatically flashing diamonds, would 
execute it in a week, though they never saw an atom of the precious metal, or cast 
envious eyes upon a single gem of the first water. 
Whether it is to the credit of science that she should so largely employ herself in the 
production of things which are not what they seem is an open question. Science is not 
simply the handmaid of the arts—she is also the servant of the artificial. It is worthy 
of some consideration, whether the man who supplies the uttermost parts of the earth 
with German silver teaspoons and diamonds of strass, is not performing as great a service 
as he who analyses the stars. Of course, in considering how far it behoves science to 
meddle with artificial substances, we have to consider the actual value of the product, 
and the scarcity of the article imitated. There is also something else to consider, viz. 
what may be the moral result of aiding the production of the artificial. Science is 
placed between two positions. She may pour sulphuric acid down the throat of an aged 
beldame, who believes she is drinking gin, or she may manufacture carmine in which 
carmine existeth not. In doing these things she steps down from her exalted throne 
and demeans herself. On the other hand, she may furnish a people with beautiful 
things, otherwise unattainable, may cultivate a taste for elegance, and bring comfort 
into thousands of homes. She may imitate all the odours in the universe, and furnish 
us with essences of all fruits, though she never saw a flower or beheld an orchard; and 
when, in our natural weakness, we lose what nature has given us, science steps in, and, 
taking us by the hand, leads us into the Paradise of the artificial! 
The means placed at the disposal of mankind by chemical science for the production 
of the artificial are almost inexhaustible. There is very little which chemistry will not 
do for you, if you ask it. It is powerful for good or evil. It cannot stop in its course 
till it has snatched all the secrets from mother earth; all natural things must pass 
through its crucible. The reign of the artificial in all its glory is yet to come, and 
chemistry will be the king-maker. The coffee of Mocha has yet to be replaced by the 
coffee of the laboratory. There are dyes yet unborn whose colours find no place in the 
rainbow. Chemistry shall one day gaze upon artificial light, putting out with its re¬ 
splendent glory the light of the noonday sun. The axe of the Peruvian shall no longer 
strip the cinchona of its bark, for the man of test-tubes shall make his quinine in that 
den of his, wherein the dreams of philosophers and alchemists have been fulfilled. 
There are hundreds of compounds upon which endless changes may be rung, and from 
which innumerable other compounds may be derived. Deprive us of all our present 
articles of food, rob us of our stone-quarries and forests, cut off our supplies of all 
imaginable things requisite for existence, and chemical science could replace them all. 
Set this science on a bare rock in the Straits of Magellan, and before she would starve 
she would have discovered a method of rendering the rock fertile, and in a year would 
have a crop of wheat nodding in the autumn breeze. 
Let no man despise the artificial. It has its uses in this world. If you can afford to 
do without it you may, but you will have to go back to Eden to do so. At the same 
time let it be remembered that genuine beauty and utility dwell only in the real. The 
artificial may do for a season, but it has a fashion of tarnishing, of suddenly displaying 
some side never intended for the public sight. It only wants time in order to become 
hideous, and to find its way, like all pinchbeck and paste, to the great limbo into which 
is cast the unreal. There are many markets in this world, but the cheapest is that in 
which truth is sold. 
There are three classes of imitative substances. The first contains purely chemical 
compounds, which, though differing from other substances in composition, present like 
characters, and may be used for similar purposes. This class also contains many chemi¬ 
cal substances which may be termed synthetical imitations of natural productions, as 
well as the artificial alkaloids. The second class contains those substances made to imi¬ 
tate certain products by a mixture containing at least a small portion of the body imi¬ 
tated ; these come properly under the head of falsification. The third class consists of 
those products which are purely artificial,—that is, while they represent certain bodies in 
appearance and application, they entirely differ from them in composition. These purely 
imitative substances alone formed the subject of the present lectures. 
The imitations of the precious metals were first described, with the several formulae 
for fictitious gold, and the various imitations of silver. 
