THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
;> 
 
RELIGIO CHEMICI 
 
 ESS A YS 
 
 BY GEORGE ^VILSON, F.R.S.E. 
 
 Late Regius Professor of Technology in the University of Edinburgh . 
 
 All things were made by Him ; and witrfcmt Him was not anything made that was 
 made. In Him was life ; and the life was the Light of Men. JOHN i. 3, 4. 
 
 London and Cambridge : 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 i 862. 
 
Edinburgh : T. Constable, 
 Printer to the Queen, and to the University. 
 
TO 
 
 JOHN CAIRNS 
 
 THESE WRITINGS 
 
 THE FRIEND HE SO DEARLY LOVED AND CHERISHED 
 ARE GRATEFULLY DEDICATED. 
 
 Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him 
 as his nun sonl. ' 
 
 M367919 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 GEORGE WILSON had it in his heart for many years 
 to write a book corresponding to the Religio Medici of Sir 
 Thomas Browne, with the title Religio Chemici. Several of 
 the Essays in this volume were intended to form chapters 
 of it, but the health and leisure necessary to carry out his 
 plans were never attainable, and thus fragments only of the 
 designed work exist. These fragments, however, being in 
 most cases like finished gems waiting to be set, some of 
 them are now given in a collected form to his friends and 
 the public. In loving remembrance of his- purpose, the 
 name chosen by himself has been adopted, although the 
 original design can be but very faintly represented. 
 
 The Biographical Sketches here given are, in like man- 
 ner, centres, around which more extended researches were 
 to group themselves ; but, as each is complete in itself, 
 it is believed many will welcome them as old friends, the 
 dearer because long known ; whilst to others they will 
 come with the freshness of first love. 
 
 Many thanks are due to Dr. Vaughari, the editor of the 
 British Quarterly Review, for permission to reprint articles 
 
viii Preface. 
 
 which appeared in that periodical ; to Adam Black, Esq., 
 in whose Edinburgh Essays for 1856 the lecture on Chemical 
 Final Causes was published ; and to Messrs. Longman and 
 Co., who issued the Chemistry of the Stars in No. 26 of 
 their Travellers* Library. 
 
 Thoughts on the Resurrection are printed now for the first 
 time, and are, like the others, fragments of a larger design. 
 The Address was given at a devotional meeting for Medical 
 Students, held periodically in Edinburgh during one of the 
 University Sessions. 
 
 An attempt is made, in sending forth this volume, to 
 meet the strongly-expressed desire of many, for more of 
 George Wilson's writings : how far the attempt has been 
 successful it is for others to say. 
 
 JESSIE A. WILSON. 
 
 EDINBURGH, ELM COTTAGE, 
 April 1862. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHEMISTRY AND NATURAL THEOLOGY, ... 1 
 
 THE CHEMISTRY OF THE STARS ; AN ARGUMENT TOUCH- 
 
 ING THE STARS AND THEIR INHABITANTS, . . . 5 1 
 
 CHEMICAL FINAL CAUSES ; AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE PRE- 
 SENCE OF PHOSPHORUS. NITROGEN, AND IRON IN THE HIGHER 
 SENTIENT ORGANISMS, ........ 104 
 
 ROBERT BOYLE, ......... 165 
 
 WOLLASTON, .......... 253 
 
 LIFE AND DISCOVERIES OF DALTON, . . . .304 
 
 THOUGHTS ON THE RESURRECTION ; AN ADDRESS TO 
 
 MEDICAL STUDENTS, ........ 365 
 
RELIGIO CHEMICI. 
 
RELIGIO4CHEMICI. 
 
 CHEMISTRY AND NATURAL THEOLOGY. 1 
 
 THE recent appearance of a new edition of Dr. Prout's 
 c Bridgewater Treatise,' and the publication, not long be- 
 fore, of the ' Actonian Prize Essay,' induce us to think 
 that the present is not an unsuitable occasion for showing 
 that chemistry is not behind the other physical sciences in 
 rendering service to natural theology. It is not likely that 
 for some time we shall see a new discussion of chemistry 
 in this relation, nor shall we readily find more accomplished 
 chemists than the authors of the works placed at the head 
 of our article. Dr. Prout is one of the most distinguished 
 of our senior chemists, and Professor Fownes one of the 
 ablest of the juniors. The former furnishes the results of 
 the investigations and meditations of years ; the latter, him- 
 self an original observer, brings to the discussion an accu- 
 
 1 (i.) Chemist ry, Meteorology) and the Function of Digestion, considered ivith 
 Reference to Natural Theology. By William Prout, M.D., F.R.S., Fellow of the 
 Royal College of Physicians. Third Edition. London, 1845. 
 
 (2.) Actonian Prize Essay. Chemistry as exemplifying the Wisdom and Bene- 
 ficence of God. By George Fownes, Ph.D., Professor of Practical Chemistry, 
 University College, London. London, John Churchill. 1844. 
 
 X 
 
2 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 rate acquaintance with the most recent discoveries. Both 
 are able writers, but their works are much more valuable 
 as treatises on chemistry, than as discussions of its bearing 
 on theology. On this we shall have somewhat more to 
 say, further on, but meanwhile, we propose, without sub- 
 jecting these works to detailed criticism, to endeavour to 
 give our readers some conception of the way in which 
 chemistry assists, as well as perplexes, natural theology. 
 
 An argument of a twofold kind is deducible from 
 chemistry, in proof of the existence of a great Designer 
 and an Omniscient Chemist. In its one aspect, it con- 
 siders matter as displaying the characters of what, for want 
 of a more dignified and equally appropriate term, we must 
 call a ' manufactured article.' In this respect, it seeks to 
 show, that the properties of chemical substances are regu- 
 lated by laws most uniform, most simple, and harmonious ; 
 and proceeds thereafter to infer that there must have been 
 an Author of all this uniformity, simplicity, and harmony ; 
 and that these are reflections of similar attributes of his 
 own being. The scope of this argument excludes entirely 
 from notice any relation which may subsist between the 
 properties of chemical substances and the welfare of living 
 beings whose bodies are fashioned out of them, and whose 
 life may be compatible only with the properties which are 
 found to exist. It professes, from a consideration of the 
 qualities of matter, apart from all uses to which that matter 
 may be put, to show that it owes its existence and attributes 
 to the will of a Great Creator, and that it proves him to be 
 ' excellent in counsel, and wonderful in working/ Into 
 this, which is the more limited and more difficult part of 
 the chemical argument for a God, we do not propose, on 
 this occasion, to enter. It would require an amount of 
 space in the mere enunciation of the purely physical facts, 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 3 
 
 on which the theological argument should afterwards be 
 founded, such as we cannot at present command. Nor 
 could the discussion be easily made to run so, that the 
 great mass of our readers should follow it with pleasure, 
 and leave it with profit. We shall not, accordingly, pursue 
 it at all. 
 
 The other and more familiar form of the argument from 
 chemistry for the existence of a Creator, is that which con- 
 siders this science not as complete in itself for that purpose, 
 or as sufficient, when taken alone, to supply proof that 
 there is a God ; but as acquiring significance for that end 
 only when taken in connexion with the living beings 
 (plants, animals, and men) which are indebted to it for 
 the elements of their frames, and beholden to it for the 
 maintenance of those functions, the arrestment of which 
 brings life at once to a close. 
 
 The atmosphere, for example, which we shall select as 
 the text whereon to discuss the limits and kind of assist- 
 ance which chemistry lends to natural theology, is a mix- 
 ture of oxygen, nitrogen, carbonic acid, water-vapour, and 
 ammonia, which, considered in itself, would not be looked 
 upon by most persons as good or bad, as directly supplying 
 evidence of the absence or the presence of design. But 
 when we consider it in connexion with the fact, that every 
 living being on the dry land is bathed in it, and lives on it, 
 and by it, and that those that are in the sea drink it in, dis- 
 solved in the element in which they live, then certain con- 
 clusions force themselves upon us, concerning the cause 
 why it proves so exactly suited to the necessities of all the 
 animated beings for whom it is the breath of life. 
 
 With a view to put the question before us in the clearest 
 light, we shall suppose that it had pleased God, after creat- 
 ing and fashioning this globe, and fitting it for the residence 
 
4 R eliglo- Chemici. 
 
 of living beings, to have himself abstained from adding to it 
 an atmosphere, but, as a mark of favour, to have commis- 
 sioned one of his angels to do so. Let this angel be further 
 supposed to have been a most accomplished anatomist, 
 botanist, physiologist, and chemist, and to have had the 
 chemical elements and their compounds entirely at his 
 command, so as to have been free to make any use of them 
 he pleased. 
 
 To our angel philosopher the following task is assigned : 
 To furnish an atmosphere fitted to maintain in full vigour 
 the life and health both of plants and animals. This atmo- 
 sphere must, further, be of such a nature that neither class 
 of living beings shall impair its suitableness for the other, 
 but, contrariwise, shall be a powerful means of preserving 
 it in a salubrious state for the opposite class : the plant 
 constantly adding to it food for the animal ; the animal 
 constantly supplying food for the plant. Moreover, it 
 must be as nearly as possible quite uniform in composition, 
 and as pure in one direction as in another, and must con- 
 tain within itself a power of self-purification, so as to be 
 able to remove or destroy all substances injurious to animal 
 or vegetable life, which may find their way into it. This 
 much settled, our angel proceeds to work in the selection 
 of ingredients for an atmosphere. In the first place, he is 
 aware that neither plants nor animals can live or grow for 
 any length of time in darkness, but must be exposed (speak- 
 ing generally) for at least some twelve out of every twenty- 
 four hours to the influence of light. No dark-coloured gas, 
 then, which would absorb and extinguish the sun's rays in 
 their passage towards the earth, can be admissible as a per- 
 manent constituent of the air. The ruddy-brown nitrous 
 acid and bromine, accordingly, the purple-vapoured iodine, 
 and yellowish-green chlorine, are all, on account of their 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 5 
 
 colour, even if not otherwise objectionable, quite out of the 
 question. 
 
 In the second place, the gas must be tasteless and in- 
 odorous ; for neither plants nor animals can exist, unless 
 for a short period, in any of the odorous or sapid gases. 
 Chlorine, bromine, iodine, and nitrous acid are on this 
 account again excluded ; and so are all the gases, simple 
 and compound, excepting oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and 
 perhaps some of the compounds of carbon and hydrogen. 
 
 In the third place, the gas or gases of the atmosphere 
 must possess a considerable solubility in water and saline 
 aqueous solutions, for they must be able to become liquid 
 in the blood to produce certain changes there ; and to dis- 
 solve in lakes, rivers, and the sea, so as to maintain the 
 respiration of the animals living in them. On the ground, 
 then, of their sparing solubility, nitrogen, hydrogen, and 
 carbonic oxide must be excluded. On the other hand, the 
 solubility must not be very great, otherwise the blood will 
 be supersaturated, and prove too exciting, and the bodies of 
 water on the surface of the earth will dissolve too much, 
 and thereby come to be hurtful to their inhabitants, whilst 
 they rob the atmosphere of too large a portion of its vital 
 ingredients. On this account then, as well as on others, 
 chlorine, bromine, nitrous acid, carbonic acid, and nitrous 
 oxide, must all be excluded. 
 
 In the fourth place (not to enumerate at too great length 
 the qualities desirable in a respirable elastic fluid), the gas 
 or gases to be breathed by animals must be able to unite 
 with carbon and hydrogen, and to evolve heat in so doing, 
 otherwise, although the other conditions of life were present, 
 the animal would perish from cold. 
 
 Upon reflection, it would soon be apparent to our angelic 
 chemist, that of all the gases, simple or compound, there 
 
6 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 was but one that possessed the necessary properties 
 namely, oxygen. The other gases, moreover, would be 
 excluded by him, not because they were deficient in single 
 serviceable qualities, but because each one of them was, 
 on several grounds, quite inadmissible. 
 
 Thus, chlorine, bromine, iodine, and nitrous acid pos- 
 sess colour, odour, taste ; are too soluble in water ; cannot 
 combine with carbon, and, in addition, are deadly poisons. 
 Carbonic acid and sulphuretted hydrogen, with the excep- 
 tion of colour, have all the noxious qualities of those gases 
 also. Hydrogen, the carburetted hydrogens, and carbonic 
 oxide, are too sparingly soluble, and cannot unite with 
 carbon and hydrogen ; carbonic oxide, moreover, is a poison, 
 and all have the serious objection of being combustible in 
 oxygen. Of all the gases, there is but one that can for a 
 moment be compared with oxygen viz., nitrous oxide, or 
 laughing gas. It has the objection, however, of having 
 both an odour and a taste, and of being exceedingly soluble 
 in water and in saline solutions. But what is worst of all, 
 though it may be respired for a short time, not only with- 
 out inconvenience, but even with pleasure, its continued 
 inspiration occasions violent excitement, and ultimately 
 death. 
 
 It appears, then, that oxygen is the only gas which will 
 serve to maintain the life of animals. It is transparent, 
 colourless, tasteless, and inodorous ; has a medium solu- 
 bility in liquids ; combines with carbon and hydrogen, and 
 evolves heat in so doing. We may suppose our angel, 
 accordingly (whom we assume to be an accomplished 
 philosopher, but not an omniscient one), proposing, in the 
 first place, to construct his atmosphere, so far as animals 
 were concerned, entirely of oxygen. But on making trial 
 of it, he finds that, if taken alone, it proves too stimulating. 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. j 
 
 The actions of the body go on with undesirable rapidity ; 
 much more heat is evolved than the animal requires, it 
 passes into a state of excitement and fever, and if allowed 
 to breathe the undiluted gas, speedily perishes. The in- 
 dispensable oxygen, then, must be diluted to the strength 
 proper for animal respiration, by some bland, innocuous 
 gas ; and there cannot be a moment's hesitation as to where 
 that gas will be found. The colourless, tasteless, inodor- 
 ous, scarcely soluble, incombustible, negative nitrogen is 
 clearly the diluent required ; and we may suppose a series 
 of trials leading our angelic atmosphere-maker to the con- 
 clusion, that, though the proportions might vary to some 
 slight extent, in the one direction or the other, without 
 causing the immediate destruction of animals, sustained life 
 was compatible only with the respirable mixture containing 
 four-fifths by volume of nitrogen, and one-fifth of oxygen. 
 Animals in lakes, rivers, and the sea, having cold blood and 
 a sluggish circulation, may have more oxygen than those 
 breathing air by lungs, but it is not necessary to make a 
 special additional provision for them, as it is secured by the 
 circumstance that oxygen dissolves in water to a greater 
 amount than nitrogen does. Water-animals are by this 
 simple device, supplied with a more oxygenated air, suited 
 to their peculiar condition. 
 
 It may here be asked by some thoughtful person, if nitro- 
 gen plays no other part in reference to animal respiration 
 than to dilute oxygen, might not the same end have been 
 equally well gained by diminishing the respiratory organs of 
 animals, so as to have had them four times smaller in 
 capacity than they are ? They would then have been filled 
 at each inspiration, with one-fifth of the volume of air 
 which at present enters them, so that the atmosphere might 
 have consisted entirely of oxygen. In reference to such 
 
8 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 a suggestion we would observe, in the first place, that we 
 have no right to assume that nitrogen is of no use to an 
 animal, merely because we cannot show that it is of ser- 
 vice ; and secondly, that such is the balance of organs in a 
 living creature, that the dimensions of one could not be 
 altered without requiring an alteration in the size or capacity 
 of all. If we alter the lungs, we must alter the heart, the 
 blood-vessels, the nerves, indeed, the whole animal. 
 Now, without entering into minute discussion, we may 
 suppose, that on the whole, even so far as the animal alone 
 is concerned, it might be better to dilute the oxygen by a 
 negative gas, and so maintain the bulk of the animal con- 
 siderable, than to give it undiluted oxygen to breathe, at 
 the expense of dwarfing and altering its whole organism. 
 Moreover, we are not entitled to assume, that oxygen 
 given alone, would have the same effect as that gas mingled 
 with four times its volume of nitrogen. In all probability 
 at would not. We are not called upon, however, to enter 
 into these discussions, but are entitled, on the other hand, 
 to protest against any such suggestions being made as we 
 have for a moment turned aside to consider. In such an 
 argument as the one we are pursuing, we must either accept 
 the animal as we find it, and consider whether or not the 
 constitution of the atmosphere harmonizes with its neces- 
 sities, or accept the atmosphere as it is, and ask whether 
 the animal is so constructed as to live within it. We are 
 at present, however, discussing the subject solely as che- 
 mists : it is quite competent for us to suggest, if we can, 
 improvements on the atmosphere, but we are not at liberty 
 to change the structure of the animal. 
 
 Neither, perhaps, is it impossible to indicate positive 
 benefits which flow to all nature from the presence of nitro- 
 gen in the atmosphere. We would venture to suggest, in 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 9 
 
 the face of those constant declarations, that no use can be 
 found for it, that it was necessary for the welfare of ani- 
 mated beings that the mass of the atmosphere should be 
 considerable, and this for many reasons ; among the rest 
 for these three : 
 
 First. Because the vicissitudes of temperature at the 
 earth's surface would be much greater than they are, and, 
 in truth, would be incompatible with life, if there were no 
 atmosphere to temper the extreme alternations of heat and 
 cold, which would occur on a naked globe. Our atmosphere 
 equalizes, more or less, the temperature of the earth, as in 
 small islands like Madeira, lying far out in the ocean, the 
 climate is rendered equable by the mass of water surround- 
 ing it, which cools it in summer and warms it in winter. 
 We do not desire to affirm, that it was necessary that our 
 atmosphere should have neither more nor less than the bulk 
 it possesses, in order to temper our climate. It would be 
 very difficult to find data from which to decide positively 
 on this point. All that we say is, that it was requisite the 
 volume of air should be considerable. 
 
 Secondly. A mass of atmosphere was necessary, that 
 there might be considerable refraction of the solar rays, and 
 a corresponding scattering and diffusion of the light, heat, 
 and other agencies of the sunbeam ; otherwise, certain 
 essential conditions of animal and vegetable life would not 
 be fulfilled. 
 
 Thirdly. A large volume of air was required, in order 
 that great winds might be produced in it, by the rarefying 
 action of the sun's rays, and the revolution of the globe 
 round its axis. We need not stop to remind the reader 
 how these winds bring us clouds, and carry them away, 
 waft us fertilizing showers, and when they are too abun- 
 dant, sweep the earth dry again : how they plough up the 
 
i o R eligio- Chemici. 
 
 deep, and refresh all living things there ; how they transport 
 man and other animals over the sea, and in a thousand 
 other ways are ministers of good. 
 
 Now, it would have been (so to speak) a waste of force 
 to have made the mass of air of a gas having powerful chemi- 
 cal affinities, seeing that these are not needed ; an inert, 
 elastic fluid, susceptible of vibrations and undulations, being 
 all that is required. This, however, is to say too little ; 
 any of the readily combining gases would have been posi- 
 tively prejudicial. We have already seen that the air could 
 not have had its volume increased by addition of oxygen, 
 for that would have poisoned the animals. Moreover, it 
 would have corroded the rocks at the earth's surface ; 
 oxidized every oxidable body ; and wasted all things. To 
 the other elastic fluids still greater objections apply. No 
 gas would do half so well as nitrogen, for increasing the 
 mass of our air without altering its properties otherwise 
 than by dilution. What water is among liquids, in 
 blandness, neutrality, and indifference, nitrogen is among 
 gases. 
 
 On the whole, then, we may suppose our angel-chemist, 
 after such a balancing of considerations as we have been 
 discussing, and not being at liberty to alter the constitution 
 of the animal, satisfying himself that the best possible atmo- 
 sphere he could mingle for sentient living beings would be 
 one consisting chiefly of nitrogen, and with a fifth of its 
 volume of oxygen. 
 
 Having, then, provided for the welfare of the animal, 
 our angel turns to the plant. It appears that the latter re- 
 quires, speaking generally, four substances to maintain its 
 growth ; namely, certain inorganic salts, which, in general, 
 it obtains from the soil ; water, ammonia, and carbonic 
 acid, which it looks for from the atmosphere. Supplied 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 1 1 
 
 with these, it asks no other food, whether moss or oak- 
 tree, but with its wonderful and quite inimitable chemistry, 
 transmutes them into hard wood, green leaves, and beauti- 
 ful flowers. 
 
 A certain proportion of water-vapour, then (which, in 
 truth, is as necessary for the animal as for the plant), must 
 be added to the atmosphere ; likewise carbonic acid and 
 ammonia. The quantity of the two latter will be deter- 
 mined by the number of the plants which are to grow at 
 the same time on the surface of the earth. Let us in the 
 meanwhile, however, not to complicate the problem, sup- 
 pose the question of quantity left out of sight, and be con- 
 tent with an atmosphere, in which a certain unspecified 
 number of plants and animals may live together. 
 
 It remains to ascertain that neither class of living beings 
 shall injure the atmosphere for the other. The problem, 
 however, is found to solve itself. 
 
 The oxygen which the animal breathes, it converts into 
 carbonic acid, and water, and returns as such to the atmo- 
 sphere. These the plant appropriates, disposing of the 
 water to suit its own exigencies, making no use of the car- 
 bonic acid during darkness, when it sleeps, but drinking it 
 in at every pore as soon as daylight awakes it, taking from 
 it its carbon, and returning its oxygen to the air. There 
 is no accumulation, then, of carbonic acid in the atmo- 
 sphere, which would kill the animal, for the plant destroys 
 it as fast as it forms. Neither is there accumulation of 
 oxygen, which would ultimately slay both plant and animal, 
 for the latter consumes that gas as quickly as the former 
 supplies it. As for the ammonia, no additional device is 
 needed to furnish it for the plant. The animal supplies it, 
 as well as, in part, the carbonic acid. During life, the 
 animal is evolving ammonia, which reaches the atmosphere, 
 
1 2 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 and nourishes the plant ; and when the former dies, in re- 
 turn for feeding, directly or indirectly, on the vegetable 
 during life, it leaves it a legacy of its flesh, blood, and 
 bones, converts itself into carbonic acid, water, and am- 
 monia, and leaving its inorganic salts in the soil, to be 
 appropriated by the roots of the plant, ascends into the air, 
 and feeds it through its leaves. 
 
 All this our angel foresees, and also that there shall not 
 only be a constant mutual dependence between plants and 
 animals, but likewise a balance as to relative numbers. 
 For, if the plants shall strive to outgrow the animals, they 
 will be stopped by a deficiency of carbonic acid and am- 
 monia to maintain them ; and if the animals shall seek to 
 outstrip the plants in number, they will be poisoned by the 
 accumulation of carbonic acid and the deficiency of oxygen. 
 Each class, then, of living beings will control the other, and 
 maintain its own privileges. 
 
 As to. further provisions for maintaining the purity of the 
 atmosphere, it appears, on reflection, that none are needed. 
 If any organic bodies are carried up into it, being com- 
 pounds of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, and all 
 oxidable, they will be converted into carbonic acid, water, 
 and ammonia, and do service instead of harm. If any 
 soluble inorganic bodies find their way into the air, they 
 will be carried down again to the earth by the rain when it 
 falls. And insoluble inorganic substances, being none of 
 them volatile, cannot be raised into the atmosphere. 
 
 All this, then, being foreseen, we may suppose our angel 
 atmosphere-maker about to mingle the ingredients We have 
 named, when it suddenly occurs to him that such a mixture 
 as he proposes to make, will not remain homogeneously 
 mingled, however thoroughly its ingredients may be at first 
 incorporated. 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 13 
 
 With the properties of individual gases he is fully ac- 
 quainted, but not with all their actions on each other. He 
 knows, however, that all kinds of matter obey the law of 
 gravitation, and that liquids which do not act chemically on 
 each other, arrange themselves according to their relative 
 densities. If it should be so with gases and why should 
 it not ? what will become of his atmosphere ? The 
 carbonic acid will descend dry, and poison the parched-up 
 plants and animals. The oxygen will float in a layer above 
 it, the nitrogen above that, and far out of sight, the watery 
 vapour will form an encircling zone, above which any stray 
 hydrogen, or other light gases, which are thrown into the 
 air, will arrange themselves in thin concentric spheres. 
 In such an atmosphere, not to mention other peculiarities, 
 every object on the earth's surface which reflected light, 
 would be mirrored in fantastic images, like those of the 
 mirage and the fata morgana^ at the lines where the differ- 
 ent strata meet. 
 
 All the goodly chemical contrivance already recorded 
 seems likely, then, to go for nothing. The problem pro- 
 posed to our angel he cannot solve, with the data which we 
 have supposed furnished to him, and he returns to the 
 great Creator, to confess, that whilst that universal law of 
 gravitation relentlessly rules all things, he must be foiled in 
 every attempt to clothe the earth with a respirable atmo- 
 sphere. 
 
 The reply of the Author of all things we may suppose to 
 be, that the law of gravitation, though wide in its bearings, 
 is not universal, but can be suspended or overruled by other 
 laws, when its operation is inconvenient or hurtful to the 
 creatures who live under its influence ; and that its action 
 being prejudicial in the circumstances supposed, another law 
 takes its place. Our angel is instructed, that though gases 
 
1 4 R eligio- Ch emici. 
 
 gravitate like other forms of matter, and exhibit greater 
 differences among their relative weights than either solids 
 or liquids do, nevertheless, when they meet, each acts as a 
 void or vacuum to the other, and they intermingle com- 
 pletely : so that not only will any number of elastic fluids, 
 if once mixed, remain homogeneously mingled, but every 
 gas or gaseous mixture possesses a power of diffusing equally 
 through itself any new gas added to it. The problem of a 
 respirable atmosphere is now solved ; and here we may bid 
 farewell to our angel, and descend to breathe the air pro- 
 vided for us. Perhaps we have made too much of him, but 
 there seemed something unnatural in assigning the task of 
 atmosphere-making to a mortal, who both had an interest 
 in its construction, arid who, moreover, must have been 
 miraculously preserved till that atmosphere was furnished 
 for him. 
 
 How beautifully that property of interdifFusiveness among 
 elastic fluids, comes in to crown and complete the other 
 beneficial qualities of the atmospheric gases, will now be 
 apparent. Every chemist who has written on his science 
 as supplying proof of design, has dwelt long and lovingly on 
 this law. We do so likewise, because the idea of a great 
 Designer is never so fully brought out by physical science, 
 as when a law permitted up to a certain point to rule 
 without let or exception, is all at once suspended, and its 
 place supplied by another. The example in the case before 
 us, is the more instructive that the force overruled is the 
 most universal of all known physical influences that, 
 namely, of gravitation. In general, science deals only with 
 forces and powers, and carries us, at best, back to a great 
 first cause ; but here, if anywhere in the circle of her domi- 
 nions, we seem, if but for a moment and dimly, to catch 
 something like a glimpse of a personal God, saying to one 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 1 5 
 
 law, c Hither shalt thou come, but no further, and here 
 shall thy power be stayed,' and calling for another that 
 was not, and it is, and all nature acknowledges a new 
 rule. 
 
 We would pause, then, for a moment, to point out a 
 little more fully than we have yet done, how beautifully this 
 force or law of gaseous diffusion works in nature. 
 
 It may seem at first sight, as if the law were an almost 
 unnecessary provision ; for the winds, it may be said, would 
 intermingle the gases, and sweep away carbonic acid, for 
 example, from the places where it was generated, and the 
 currents occasioned by combustion would carry off that 
 produced by fire. Moreover, it may be urged, that this 
 poisonous gas would not accumulate in the air, for the sea 
 and other waters would dissolve it, and remove it from the 
 atmosphere ; and even if it did collect there, the mass of 
 air is so great, that all the carbonic acid produced in a cen- 
 tury would not sensibly deteriorate it. 
 
 Without entering into minute discussion on these state- 
 ments, it may suffice to say, that to maintain the atmo- 
 sphere uniform in composition by the action of winds, would 
 require tremendous hurricanes to sweep in every direction 
 through it, and even the fiercest winds would only effect 
 a most imperfect mixture. The currents occasioned by 
 combustion would carry the noxious gases but a very short 
 way, and would soon let them fall. Solution of the carbonic 
 acid in the sea would kill all the living creatures there ; and 
 although it is true that the impurities added to the atmo- 
 sphere are very small in quantity compared with its mass, it 
 is equally true that they would prove most destructive to life, 
 if not diluted through its entire volume ; and without the 
 law of diffusion no such dilution could occur. Even if all 
 the forces we have supposed able to supplant diffusion were 
 
1 6 R eligio- Ch emici. 
 
 at work, they would in many cases utterly fail to ward off 
 evil. A solitary sleeper in a confined chamber, could gain 
 nothing from the winds, or thermo-currents, or the far-off 
 sea. The carbonic acid from his lungs gathering heavy 
 round his head, would soon steal away his senses. His 
 breath would be to him the breath of death, and his first 
 sleep his last. As it is, though we were inhabitants of an 
 atmosphere as motionless as that in which the Ancient 
 Mariner and his crew lay becalmed, and not one breath of 
 wind stirred the still air, yet this silent and resistless force 
 would lift up as on wings the heaviest gas, and send it to 
 the limit of the atmosphere ; and make the lightest descend 
 like a shot bird, even to the very bottom of the deepest 
 mine. 
 
 Few, perhaps, of our readers have considered how, but 
 for this force, rain and dew would long ago have ceased to 
 fall, and the green earth have been parched and dried up 
 like a desert. ' All the rivers run into the sea, yet is the 
 sea not full. From the place whence the rivers came, 
 thither they return again.' And why is it so ? even because 
 this force of diffusion, when assisted jpy the sun, is able to 
 lift up the ocean itself, and to make it thin air. 
 
 We have all watched with delight a drop of dew lying in 
 the cup of a flower ; but few marvel at the fact, that that 
 little drop returns to the air whence it came. Why should 
 it not lie in its flower-cup for ever ? A pearl lies at the 
 bottom of the sea, and makes no effort to float up to the 
 surface ; and yet the difference in density between the 
 pearl and the sea, is much less than that between the dew- 
 drop and the air. A globule of quicksilver let fall into the 
 ocean rests in its bed for ever, yet it is only some eleven 
 times heavier than the water above it. The dew-drop is 
 815 times more dense than the air, and there are hundreds 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theclogy. 17 
 
 of tons of the latter pressing on it ; but no sooner does the 
 sun arise, than it brightens and exhales to heaven. It 
 bounds up like a bird into the blue sky. The air opens its 
 arms for it, and lifts it into its bosom, and by and by 
 spreads it from pole to pole, and it encircles the world. 
 
 The atmosphere thus solicits and encourages nay, com- 
 pels the rise of vapour, and keeps undiminished an embryo 
 store of refreshing dews and warm showers for the earth, 
 and so it ever holds good that ' the clouds come after the 
 rain.' 
 
 One last reference to this law. But for it, all other con- 
 trivances for maintaining the life of animals would have 
 totally failed to secure that end, for respiration would have 
 been impossible. To sentient beings, the atmosphere would 
 have been as useless as the most dainty and nutritious food 
 is to one who has not the power to swallow. There is this 
 perplexing problem to be solved in the case of respiration. 
 An animal has not two sets of air-tubes, as it has two kinds 
 of blood-vessels, along one of which (the arteries) the blood 
 goes, whilst by the other (the veins) it returns. There is 
 only one windpipe in animals, by which the oxygen may 
 travel to reach the blood, and the carbonic acid return to 
 reach the air. By the same channel we must constantly 
 cause two counter or reverse currents to pass : a stream of 
 oxygen from the outer air to dissolve in the blood ; a stream 
 of carbonic acid from the blood to dissipate into the air. 
 The breathing-tube of an animal is thus like a railway tun- 
 nel, through which trains are constantly passing in opposite 
 directions, and yet there is but one pair of rails. 
 
 There is no mechanical or vital device for effecting the 
 transference of the opposing aerial currents ; no living alter- 
 nating pump like the heart, which should this moment suck 
 oxygen into the blood, and the next moment suck carbonic 
 
 B 
 
1 8 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 acid out of it. The muscles of the chest, by their action, 
 alternately fill and empty the larger wind-tubes, or what we 
 may call the lobbies of the air-galleries. It is only in the 
 narrow passages and distant corridors, that the blood and air 
 meet and act on each other. There, however, the pantings 
 and heavings of the chest have no direct effect in filling or 
 emptying the air-channels. It is all occasioned by the 
 power of diffusion. The issuing carbonic acid acts like a 
 vacuum to the entering oxygen, or at most, neither gas re- 
 sists the passage of the other, more than the pebbles in the 
 bed of a stream do the water flowing over them. They 
 glide past each other, impelled by an irresistible force, which 
 obliges them to change places, so that a certain volume of 
 the one cannot by possibility travel in one direction, without 
 permitting, nay, without compelling, a certain volume of 
 the other to pass in the opposite one. The gases entering 
 and leaving the blood are like weights hanging at opposite 
 ends of a string suspended over a pulley, or like the buckets 
 in a well. The one cannot sink without causing the other 
 to ascend, or either move in one way, without causing the 
 other to move in the reverse one. There are animals in 
 which the air-tubes are as rigid as iron, so that they cannot 
 expand or contract to carry air to or from the blood. In 
 these the force of diffusion alone maintains respiration, but 
 without that force it could not go on in any class of terres- 
 trial beings. So much for this wonderful law. 
 
 The analytical method we have followed in studying the 
 chemistry of the atmosphere, has had the necessary disad- 
 vantage of compelling us to pursue it bit by bit, and, as it 
 were, piecemeal. We must now try to conceive of the 
 atmosphere as a whole, and to realize clearly the idea of 
 its unity. And what a whole ! what a unity it is ! It pos- 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 19 
 
 sesses properties so wonderful, and so dissimilar, that we 
 are slow to believe that they can exist together. It rises 
 above us with its cathedral dome, arching towards that hea- 
 ven of which it is the most familiar synonyme and symbol. 
 It floats around us like that grand object which the apostle 
 John saw in his visions ' a sea of glass like unto crystal/ 
 So massive is it, that when it begins to stir, it tosses about 
 great ships like playthings, and sweeps cities and forests, 
 like snowflakes, to destruction before it. And yet it is so 
 mobile, that we have lived years in it before we can be per- 
 suaded that it exists at all, and the great bulk of mankind 
 never realize the truth that they are bathed in an ocean of 
 air. Its weight is so enormous, that iron shivers before it 
 like glass ; yet a soap-bell sails through it with impunity, 
 and the tiniest insect waves it aside with its wing. 
 
 It ministers lavishly to all the senses. We touch it not, 
 but it touches us. Its warm south winds bring back colour 
 to the pale face of the invalid ; its cool west winds refresh 
 the fevered brow and make the blood mantle in our cheeks ; 
 even its north blasts brace into new vigour the hardened 
 children of our rugged clime. The eye is indebted to it for 
 all the magnificence of sunrise, the full brightness of mid- 
 day, the chastened radiance of the gloaming, and the ' clouds 
 that cradle near the setting sun.' But for it, the rainbow 
 would want its c triumphal arch,' and the winds would not 
 3end their fleecy messengers on errands roiind the heavens. 
 The cold ether would not shed its snow-feathers on the 
 earth, nor would drops of dew gather on the flowers. The 
 kindly rain would never fall, nor hailstorm nor fog diversify 
 the face of the sky. Our naked globe would turn its tanned 
 and unshadowed forehead to the sun, and one dreary, mono- 
 tonous blaze of light and heat dazzle and burn up all things. 
 Were there no atmosphere, the evening sun would in a 
 
2O R eligio- Chemici. 
 
 moment set, and, without warning, plunge the earth in 
 darkness. But the air keeps in her hand a sheaf of his rays, 
 and lets them slip but slowly through her fingers : so that 
 the shadows of evening gather by degrees, and the flowers 
 have time to bow their heads ; and each creature space to 
 find a place of rest, and to nestle to repose. In the morn- 
 ing, the garish sun would at one bound burst from the 
 bosom of night, and blaze above the horizon : but the air 
 watches for his coming, and sends at first but one little ray 
 to announce his approach, and then another, and by and by 
 a handful, and so gently draws aside the curtains of night, 
 and slowly lets the light fall on the face of the sleeping 
 earth, till her eyelids open, and, like man, she goeth forth 
 again to her labour till the evening. 
 
 To the ear it brings all the sounds that pulsate through 
 it. The grave eloquence of men ; the sweet songs and 
 happy laughter of women ; the prayers and the praises 
 which they utter to God ; the joyous carols of birds ; the 
 hum of insect wings ; the whisper of the winds when they 
 breathe gently, and their laughter and wild choruses when 
 they shriek in their wrath ; the plashing of fountains ; the 
 murmur of rivers ; the roaring of cataracts ; the rustling of 
 forests ; the trumpet-note of the thunder ; and the deep, 
 solemn voice of the everlasting sea. Had there been no at- 
 mosphere, melody nor harmony would not have been, nor 
 any music. The earth might have made signs to the eye, 
 like one bereft of speech, and have muttered from her 
 depths inarticulate sounds, but nature would have been 
 voiceless, and we should have gazed only on shores c where 
 all was dumb. 7 To the last of the senses the air is not less 
 bountiful than to the others. It gathers to itself all per- 
 fumes and fragrance ; from bean-fields in flower, and mea- 
 dows of new-mown hay ; from hills covered with wild 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 21 
 
 thyme, and gardens of roses. The breezes, those ' heavy- 
 winged thieves,' waft them hither and thither, and the sweet 
 south wind ' breathes upon banks of violets, stealing and 
 giving odour.' 
 
 Such is a faint outline of the atmosphere. The sea has 
 been called the pathway of the nations, but it is a barrier as 
 well as a bond between them. It is only the girdling and 
 encircling air which flows above and around all, that makes 
 the ' whole world kin/ The carbonic acid with which our 
 breathing fills the air, to-morrow will be speeding north and 
 south, and striving to make the tour of the world. The 
 date-trees that grow round the fountains of the Nile will 
 
 o 
 
 drink it in by their leaves ; the cedars of Lebanon will take 
 of it, to add to their stature ; the cocoa-nuts of Tahiti will 
 grow riper upon it ; and the palms and bananas of Japan 
 change it into flowers. 
 
 The oxygen we are breathing, was distilled for us some 
 short time ago by the magnolias of the Susquehanna, and 
 the great trees that skirt the Orinoco and the Amazon. 
 The giant rhododendrons of the Himalayas contributed to 
 it, the roses and myrtles of Cashmere, the cinnamon-trees 
 of Ceylon, and forests older than the flood buried deep in the 
 heart of Africa, far behind the Mountains of the Moon. 
 
 The rain which we see descending was thawed for us 
 out of icebergs which have watched the pole-star for ages ; 
 and lotus lilies sucked up from the Nile and exhaled as va- 
 pour the snows that are lying on the tops of our hills. 
 
 The earth is our mother, and bears us in her arms : but 
 the air is our foster-mother, and nurses each one. Men of 
 all kindreds, and peoples, and nations, four-footed beasts 
 and creeping things, fowls of the air and whales of the sea, 
 old trees of the forest, mosses wreathed upon boughs, and 
 lichens crumbling on stones, drink at the same perennial 
 
22 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 fount of life which flows freely for all. Nursed at the same 
 breast, we are of one family plants, animals, and men ; 
 and God's ' tender mercies are over us all.' Must we 
 strive, by rule of logic and absolute demonstration, to shut 
 up each reader into a corner, and compel him to acknow- 
 ledge that the atmosphere was not self-created, but was 
 made by Him ' who stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, 
 and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.' Is there 
 any one who can resist exclaiming, ' O Lord ! how mani- 
 fold are thy works, in wisdom hast thou made them all ?' 
 
 To utter some such exclamation will be the natural dic- 
 tate of most minds. But let us put aside every attempt to 
 take advantage of emotional feelings excited by appeal, and 
 calmly ask ourselves what we are entitled to build upon the 
 truths we have been learning. 
 
 If our readers have assented to the arguments which in- 
 duced our imaginary atmosphere-maker to choose the con- 
 stituents for an atmosphere which we have supposed him to 
 select, they will readily acknowledge that it is impossible 
 not to believe that the air was mingled by a being, or by 
 beings, perfectly acquainted with the anatomy and physio- 
 logy of the plants and animals which were to breathe it and 
 feed on it. The atmosphere, then, has not the characters 
 of a chance compound, but all the peculiarities of a com- 
 plex mixture, carefully mingled for a special object. 
 
 If, then, we acknowledge design, we imply the existence 
 of one or more designers. We cannot take it upon us to 
 affirm, from physical science, that there certainly was but a 
 single designer, and not several acting in concert. We 
 must be content with showing, or endeavouring to show, 
 that a perfect unanimity of counsel prevailed between the 
 maker of the plant and the maker of the animal the crea- 
 tor of the sea and the author of the earth the former of 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 23 
 
 the sun and the deviser of the atmosphere, and then appeal 
 to the love of unity in every man's breast, and ask him if 
 that is not outraged by the cumbrous, unwieldy, and unne- 
 cessary hypothesis, that there have been many gods, and 
 not one, employed in fashioning the globe. Let it, however, 
 be freely acknowledged, that physical science can only 
 prove that power, wisdom, and knowledge have been and 
 are at work in the world. Whether they are centred in 
 one Being, or are shared among many, is a problem it 
 cannot undertake to solve. 
 
 On the other hand, if it shall appear that there is an a 
 priori intuition in our minds of one God ; if our consciences 
 shall be found testifying to the difference between right 
 and wrong, and connecting that distinction with one Moral 
 Governor ; if human tradition shall be found, amidst all 
 polytheistic expansions, to have at bottom held firm by the 
 idea of a single Creator and Ruler of the world ; if an accre- 
 dited and trustworthy divine revelation shall have assured 
 us of the unity of him who has declared that ' the Lord our 
 God is one Lord,' then physical science will affirm that all 
 creation entirely accords with such a declaration. If any 
 one will assert that it is more probable that there were, and 
 are, several creators and preservers of the world than that 
 there is but one, the burden of the proof, we apprehend, 
 lies with him. 
 
 We consider it unnecessary to enter into a formal discus- 
 sion of the evidence of design, for if the array of proofs we 
 have brought incidentally forward do not establish its exist- 
 ence, there must be a fallacy in the whole argument. More- 
 over, we take it for granted that all who are satisfied that 
 there is design, will acknowledge there must be a designer. 
 Either, when we see design, we infer that there must be a 
 designer, or we are not necessitated to draw such an inference. 
 
24 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 If the latter be true, the whole of natural theology is baseless, 
 and it is quite as probable that the world made itself, as that 
 God made it. We suppose, however, that we have not a 
 single reader who doubts either the existence of design or 
 of a designer. In truth, the argument would be worth very 
 little, if it needed eight Bridgewater Treatises to prove that 
 it was true. A single flower will serve as well as an atmo- 
 sphere to prove design. Even a grain of sand bears unmis- 
 takable marks of the fingers of a most exquisite artist. 
 The marvellous thing would be, if so much as a particle of 
 matter could be found which proclaimed itself to be form- 
 less and designless. There is none such in the universe. 
 We should be terrified if we found one. 
 
 We suppose it, then, acknowledged that the world gives 
 proof of wisdom, knowledge, and power having wrought, 
 and being at work in it; and pause to ask the question, 
 Does it also show that beneficence is working there ? 
 
 This is the matter which most concerns us. It is the 
 only part of the problem which, in a moral point of view, 
 we need be careful to answer. Knowledge, wisdom, and 
 power are but means to an end. If they are not wielded 
 by justice, mercy, and benevolence, or if they are guided 
 by evil influences, the designs they work out may have no 
 mark of goodness upon them, or even bear the stamp of 
 utter malevolence. 
 
 What, then, is the testimony of physical science on this 
 subject ? Does it declare that unthwarted benevolence is 
 found triumphantly working out a great scheme for securing 
 unalloyed and perfect happiness to all under its control ? If 
 the answer is not already on our lips, it will soon be. That 
 same atmosphere which brings summer showers, brings 
 winter rains also ; sends chilling east winds, cold frosts, and 
 pitiless hailstorms ; scatters the seeds of a thousand diseases, 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 25 
 
 fans and nurses them till they ripen to death, and helps 
 consumptions and fevers to sweep their thousands away. 
 Its diffusive power is not more ready to intermingle the vital 
 oxygen with the other elements of the air, than it is to carry 
 the subtle poison of plague or cholera round the globe. 
 But for it, miasms and malaria would confine their ravages 
 to the spots where they originated, or at worst travel out- 
 wards only by slow and warning steps, so that men might 
 flee from them. But to the air they are as welcome as the 
 choicest perfumes of flowers. It will take no refusal, but 
 adds each to itself, and every living being is compelled to 
 drain the poisoned draught. 
 
 The air has its warm zephyrs and beneficent trade-winds, 
 but it has also its monsoons and tornadoes, its whirlwinds 
 and hurricanes, which depopulate whole islands and sweep 
 the earth like besoms of destruction. It has its small rain 
 for the tender grass ; its warm mantle of snow-down to lay 
 over the young leaves till summer shall come ; its refresh- 
 ing dew for the sleeping flowers ; but it likewise holds in 
 its right hand a flaming thunderbolt, with which it shatters 
 navies to fragments, whilst it asks, in the name of God, 
 ' Who can thunder with a voice like him ? ' How many 
 millions of men have died of diseases of the lungs ! Whilst 
 we have been rejoicing over the exquisite adaptation of the 
 atmosphere to the necessities of animals, and to the respira- 
 tory organs with which they are provided, hundreds of 
 sufferers have been agonizing under the wasting pangs of 
 consumption, not to mention other diseases. What is this ? 
 The lungs of those invalids were made to breathe air, and 
 air was provided for them. What, then, has altogether 
 failed and utterly gone wrong ? The vital and sustaining 
 oxygen is burning up the body, and maddening it with 
 fever, -the bland and innocuous nitrogen is exciting fierce 
 
i6 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 fits of uncontrollable coughing ; each note a death-knell. 
 The water-vapour, so necessary to life, is bursting forth in 
 clammy perspiration, swiftly stealing strength away. The 
 bells are all ringing backwards. The instrument that once 
 syllabled music so sweet, is jangling only discords. Are 
 those who are tormented thus solitary sufferers, rendering 
 the happiness of all others only the more conspicuous by 
 the contrast they afford ? All men do not die of consump- 
 tion, nor of diseases of the lungs but all die. Not one 
 pair of lungs has yet been found, nor any kind of respira- 
 tory organ of man or animal, which has not worn out, or 
 what is worse, has not been cut short in its working, and 
 thrown aside like an instrument wantonly destroyed. The 
 exception proves the rule, but there is no rule proved only 
 by exceptions. Our argument set out by declaring that 
 animals were made to live, and furnished with all the means 
 of living ; it ends by acknowledging that all die. It has 
 further to admit, that scarcely one of the higher animals 
 perishes by what we can call natural decay, or liken to the 
 winding down, or silent cessation of the moving power of a 
 machine. It confesses, mournfully, that there is not "merely 
 death, but likewise suffering ; anguish and agony, for which 
 physical science can show no final cause, or see any reason. 
 To this great mystery we seek for a short space to direct 
 the reader's attention. 
 
 We count it a great and blameworthy defect in nearly 
 all our recent publications on Natural Theology, that due 
 prominence is not given to the dark as well as to the bright 
 side of Nature. A wrong is thus done to science, to which 
 the perplexed inquirer is sent to read a lesson which it does 
 not teach, and to find depicted a character of God which it 
 disowns. An equal wrong is done to Revelation, which is 
 made to appear as if it gave a less perfect account of the 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 27 
 
 Almighty than Nature does, and did not proclaim him the 
 infinitely benevolent being which his works show him to 
 be. It seems to us, therefore, a plain and imperative duty 
 to illustrate, by one or two examples, the extent to which 
 chemistry reveals evil as well as good in the world, and 
 thereafter to consider, very cursorily, how far the existence 
 of that evil modifies our views of the benevolence of God. 
 We rejoice to have an opportunity of disavowing the prac- 
 tice so common among recent authors, of slurring over the 
 difficulties of natural theology. Some of them write and 
 speak as if there were absolutely none. Professor Fownes, 
 for example, in his ' Actonian Prize Essay,' carries us 
 through a succession of proofs of benevolence, and scarcely 
 halts for a moment to hint that there is so much as the shadow 
 of a ground for suspecting that this benevolence ever fails, 
 or seems to fail, in its purpose. He appears to have con- 
 sidered, perhaps naturally enough, that the prize was to be 
 given for adducing proofs of kindly design, and to have 
 studiously omitted all reference to anything pointing the 
 opposite way. One of his concluding advices to his reader 
 is, to consider himself in the hands ' of a Being of unmixed 
 and unbounded benevolence.' 1 
 
 Others, who have discussed the same question, have 
 lingered but for a moment over the difficulties of their 
 argument, thankful if they could only suggest some most 
 improbable explanation, and pass on to more tractable 
 topics. Dr. Prout, for example, in his ' Bridgewater 
 Treatise,' arrests for a moment his exposition of bene- 
 ficence, to ask what the evil in nature, real or apparent, 
 means. All, however, that he can offer in the way of 
 explanation on the subject is to ask, ' Who can say that the 
 minor evil may not have been essential to the greater good ? ' 
 
 1 Actonian Essay, p. 153. 
 
2 8 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 ' That the poisonous metals, for instance, are not, as it 
 were, the refuse of the great chemical processes by which 
 the more important principles of nature have been elimi- 
 nated ?' It is important to notice what Dr. Prout's argu- 
 ment is. According to him, the poisonous substances in 
 nature are the refuse of the processes by which our world 
 was made ; and are as necessarily present in it, as dross, and 
 slags, and scoriae accompany the manufacture of a steam- 
 engine, or other similar machine. The argument, unfor- 
 tunately, if it prove anything, proves a great deal too much. 
 There is not one of the metals which does not yield several 
 compounds, which even in moderate quantity are poisonous 
 both to plants and animals ; the greater number, after 
 combination with the other elements, are deadly poisons. 
 If poisonousness, then, be the mark or sign of a body being 
 refuse, every one of the metals stands in this predicament ; 
 and from gold to iron, each must be looked upon as bearing 
 no stamp of design upon it. Now, the metals are the most 
 abundant chemical elements, 46 out of the 60 being 
 metallic, so that at one stroke, Dr. Prout brands more than 
 two-thirds of simple chemical substances as refuse matter. 
 The remaining 14 non-metallic elements can as ill bide the 
 test, as the metallic ones could. Five of them, chlorine, 
 bromine, iodine, fluorine, and phosphorus, are more power- 
 ful poisons than any metal. In truth, there is not one of 
 the metals of itself poisonous, not even arsenic, mercury, 
 or copper. It is not till they enter into combination with 
 some non-metallic substance that they become deadly ; 
 and no body is more effectual in rendering them so, than 
 that life-sustaining oxygen which Dr. Prout has specially 
 referred to, as showing marks of beneficent design. 
 
 The last nine elements, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, 
 carbon, boron, silicon, sulphur, selenium, and tellurium, 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 29 
 
 are not poisonous uncombined. Every one of them, how- 
 ever, forms destructive compounds with the metals ; in 
 which it is to be observed, that the non-metallic body is as 
 much concerned in conferring the character of noxiousness 
 to vegetable and animal life, as the metallic element is. 
 The poison, arsenious acid, for example, is a compound of 
 the metal arsenic and of oxygen, neither of which is singly 
 poisonous. The deadliness of the resulting body is as much 
 owing to the oxygen as to the arsenic ; and so with similar 
 compounds. Moreover, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and 
 carbon, the characteristic elements of plants and animals, 
 have only to unite with each other to form compounds much 
 more deadly than any mineral poisons. Thus, the chief 
 constituents of air, nitrogen and oxygen, combine to form 
 the corrosive nitric acid. Carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen 
 make up the most terrible of all poisons prussic acid ; and 
 these are not solitary cases, for the same elements form, by 
 interunion, many other compounds scarcely less deadly. 
 
 On inquiry, then, it appears that every chemical element 
 is originally, or becomes by combination, a poison ; and as 
 the globe, including its inhabitants, consists solely of poisons, 
 our world is nothing but refuse. When our poet declared 
 of Nature that 
 
 ' Her prentice han' she tried on man, 
 And then she made the lasses,' 
 
 every one admired the beauty of the thought. But who 
 ever expected to be told, by way of proving that God was 
 beneficent, that the Creator had served an apprenticeship 
 to world-making, and that, too, to so little purpose, that he 
 failed in the manufacture of the globe we inhabit ? One 
 can only forgive the folly, not to say profanity, of the 
 thought, by believing that the author did not see whither 
 his argument led. In truth, he appears scarcely to have 
 
3 o Religio- Chemici. 
 
 uttered it before he became ashamed of his opinion, for he 
 immediately asks if it be not possible ' that these poisonous 
 principles have not been left with such subdued properties 
 as scarcely to interfere with His [God's] great design, 
 not because they could not have been prevented not 
 because they could not have been removed but on pur- 
 pose and designedly to display his power ? ' 
 
 It is the absence of anything like a resolute attempt to 
 look this great problem of physical evil in the face, that 
 renders our Bridgewater Treatises so little valuable as 
 works on natural theology. We except entirely from this 
 charge Dr. Chalmers' beautiful volume, which has none of 
 that appearance of being written to order, so unpleasantly 
 evident in some of the others ; and we fully acknowledge 
 the value they all possess as scientific treatises. But to 
 prove design, and even benevolent design, is not enough ; 
 neither is much elaborate argument necessary to establish 
 its existence. The great mass of mankind are perfectly 
 willing to acknowledge, and to believe, that feet were made 
 for walking, teeth for mastication, and eyes for vision. It 
 is an easy task for an author to prove that these organs were 
 intended for the purposes specified, when he is addressing 
 readers who have all their lives taken for granted that such 
 were the uses they were intended to serve. Let all thanks 
 and honour, notwithstanding, be given to the accomplished 
 men of science who have with so much skill and patience 
 investigated, and rendered intelligible to every reader, the 
 exquisite devices and arrangements with which nature is 
 full ; even if they have done no more than illustrate a 
 familiar argument, and justify an anticipated and foregone 
 conclusion. At the same time, however, we are surely 
 entitled to ask, at the hands of those who engage to prove 
 to us that nature is the sum of innumerable contrivances 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 3 1 
 
 for securing health, happiness, and life, why it is that dis- 
 ease, agony, and death reign ultimately supreme, and van- 
 quish their opposites ? do these latter flow from the same 
 source as the former ? are they co-ordinate and necessary 
 parts of the system of nature ? have they always existed ? 
 will they ever cease to be ? do they destroy the force 
 of the argument for the benevolence of the Creator ? do 
 they imply that evil as well as good powers have been, and 
 are at work in the world ? These and many similar ques- 
 tions, as it seems to us, call for much fuller consideration 
 than they have received at the hands of any of our later 
 writers on natural theology. Our ultimate estimate of the 
 value of the whole argument must be determined by the 
 modes in which we dispose of them ; and the slight and 
 unsatisfactory way in which they are ignored, passed by, or 
 summarily dismissed, in works otherwise so able as those 
 to which we have been referring, is the reason, we suppose, 
 why the Bridgewater Treatises on the physical sciences are 
 esteemed by men on account of their science, not their 
 theology, and are scarcely read by women at all. We count 
 it, that had they fulfilled their purpose, it would not have 
 been so. To intelligent and cultivated women, with their 
 fine sense of harmony, their keen sympathy with suffering, 
 and horror at pain, any honest and earnest attempt to 
 account for the physical evil that is in the world, must 
 have been acceptable, and they would not have declined 
 to master difficulties of chemistry, of anatomy, or geology, 
 had these engaged to lift even a corner of the dark veil 
 which hides God's goodness from us. But they might 
 well forbear attempting the study of intricate and unfemi- 
 nine sciences, when these promised, at the utmost, to do 
 no more than prove that wisdom and benevolence are* attri- 
 butes of God a truth which, had they ever doubted it, 
 
3 2 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 they could prove to themselves more pleasingly, and quite 
 as fully, by a glance, like Milton's Eve, at their own re- 
 flected images ; by the sight of a sea-shell or a summer 
 flower, as by reference to the noxious gases of the labora- 
 tory, or to the horrors of the dissecting-room. 
 
 To a task so difficult as that of inquiring how far physi- 
 cal science can harmonize the evil she brings to light, with 
 the good, we are not about to address ourselves. We 
 propose only to pave the way for such an inquiry, by 
 pressing upon our readers the reality and extent of the 
 physical evil that is in the world. Two examples of its 
 frequency are all that our space will allow us to furnish. 
 The first of these shall be the occurrence of chemical 
 substances or conditions destructive to vegetable and animal 
 life, and that in circumstances where living beings cannot 
 avoid being destroyed by them. No one could acknow- 
 ledge more willingly than we have done, that, speaking 
 generally, living beings were made to live and to enjoy 
 life, and that the means for securing them that enjoyment 
 were abundantly provided. It is not the less true, how- 
 ever, that they are not guarded against the destructive in- 
 fluence of agents hostile to life, which frequently extermi- 
 nate thousands at a stroke. Millions of animals have been 
 seen lying dead at the same time on the shores of the 
 Southern Atlantic islands ; countless numbers of fishes 
 have been known to perish at once, by the discharges of 
 submarine springs and volcanoes, which poison the sea for 
 miles around ; and earthquakes, volcanoes, tempests, hurri- 
 canes, and pestilences deal destruction wholesale to those on 
 the dry land. It has been so, not only since the beginning 
 of the historic era, but from a much earlier period. Among 
 the records of bygone ages, which geology has written down 
 with her lithographic pen, and preserved for ever, are dark 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 33 
 
 and constantly recurring tales of oceans full of living crea- 
 tures stifled simultaneously by sudden and swift catastrophes, 
 which gave no warning of their approach, and from the 
 disastrous effects of which there was no escape. Nor 
 have exterminations of this kind been limited to animals 
 low in the scale of organization, like fishes. The giant 
 limbs of the mammoth have not saved him from being; 
 
 o 
 
 reached by a destruction so swift and unexpected, that he 
 has been entombed entire in ice, as flies are found encased 
 in amber, before decay had time to make any impression on 
 his huge carcase. The countless fossil remains of tropical 
 animals found in our own country, appear to indicate that 
 the temperature of our northern latitudes was once much 
 higher than it is now, and that the change in this respect 
 proved as destructive to animal life, as the transportation of 
 the creatures in our equatorial regions to either of the poles 
 would do at the present day. Geology is mournfully full 
 of similar records. 
 
 It is not that animals die, but the mode in which they 
 are cut off, that afflicts us. Some physiologists affirm, that 
 no provision or necessity for death can be shown to exist 
 in any animal, which, to all appearance, might, if not in- 
 vaded from without, live for ever. But the greater num- 
 ber of authors, and assuredly more justly, point out that 
 from the instant when life commences, till its close, a series 
 of changes is going on, which necessitates extinction of 
 vitality. The infant is rosy and plump, with elastic car- 
 tilages, and soft, yielding blood-vessels and air-tubes ; the 
 old man's blue veins start up, through the thin, wasted, 
 meagre skin ; below this, all the fat that rounded off the 
 otherwise harsh outlines of the child, has been slowly and 
 constantly removing, to accumulate round the heart and 
 great arteries ; the bones, once supple and yielding, have 
 
 c 
 
34 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 year by year been growing more brittle, till they snap 
 through like glass ; the arteries are fast becoming rigid, 
 bony canals, and by and by will cease to carry blood ; the 
 grasshopper will become a burden, and the golden bowl be 
 broken at the fountain. 
 
 These changes are independent of external violence and 
 of disease, and show themselves in all animals. They can 
 only obscurely, and with a certain propriety, be compared 
 to the wearing out of any machine of man's construction ; 
 for, in the latter, they are the same materials, weakened by 
 long use and worn out by friction and concussion against 
 each other, that at length cease to move, or give way ; 
 whereas in the former, though this also is happening, there 
 is something more going on. The body of the aged man 
 is not that of the middle-aged one grown older, but a quite 
 new body, constructed on a principle of constantly decreas- 
 ing mobility, and intended to go on changing and becoming 
 less mobile, till it stop altogether. Death coming on ani- 
 mals in this way, would be no King of Terrors ; he would 
 be as little fearful, he would often be as welcome, as his 
 twin-brother, Sleep. Death in such a shape would not, we 
 think, be invested by us with positive attributes at all ; it 
 would only be not life. 
 
 If, in this way, we saw an animal developing from its 
 germ, as a flower does from its seed, reaching maturity, re- 
 taining this for some time ; then declining gradually ; and 
 finally, like a watch which has unwound its spring, or a 
 clock with its weights rolled down, dying as a flower dies 
 its merely ceasing to exist would not necessarily excite 
 any painful feeling or regret, especially if its death made 
 room for a successor in the bloom of youth, and destined to 
 go through the same series of happy and painless changes. 
 A creature born into existence in TIME has no injustice 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 35 
 
 done to it, if its life be brought to a close in time. Our 
 own immortality is not by birthright, but by the gift of 
 God. 
 
 But when we see a noble, beautiful animal, this moment 
 exulting in the possession of life and strength, and drinking 
 in with keenest zest the air and light of heaven, and the 
 next a 'kneaded clod,' the feeling natural to us is one of 
 surprise and disappointment, like that with which we should 
 witness a magnificent steam-engine, or other exquisitely- 
 constructed machine, suddenly broken to pieces whilst exe- 
 cuting its movements. 
 
 Every one must have felt, in slaying even a noxious, still 
 more an innocent animal, that it was a harsh thing and a 
 sad one to take away its life a thing we cannot restore. 
 Othello, besides the deeper reasons for lamenting Desde- 
 mona's death, grudged sorely the mere extinction of her 
 beautiful animal existence, and contrasts the impossibility 
 of reviving it with the power he had of rekindling an ex- 
 tinguished flame : 
 
 ' Put out the light, and then put out the light. 
 If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, 
 I can again thy former light restore, 
 Should I repent me ; but once put out Thy light, 
 Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling Nature, 
 1 know not where is that Promethean heat 
 That can thy light relume,' 
 
 When this, to appearance, wanton destruction of animal 
 life occurs not once, but many times, and is seen overtak- 
 ing thousands of creatures simultaneously, and that through- 
 out the whole period of time during which, so far as we 
 know, life has shown itself on the globe, the conceptions 
 we had formed of material nature as a harmoniously 
 adjusted system before we took cognizance of this fact, 
 must be qualified as soon as we become aware of its ex- 
 
3 6 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 istence ; and either we must confess that the harmony we 
 had assumed to exist, is liable to great and violent interrup- 
 tions, or acknowledge that we must find, if that be possible, 
 a new and perhaps unattainable standard of harmony, which 
 shall include, and find a place for what was irreducible to 
 the former one. 
 
 We refer at present, it will be observed, to death, not as 
 implying pain or suffering, but simply as being in many, 
 indeed in most cases, the sudden and unexpected stoppage 
 of a machine, which, but for extrinsic interference, would 
 have continued to perform its functions for a much longer 
 period, perhaps for ever. The Bridgewater anatomist and 
 physiologist have undertaken to prove to us that each animal 
 is a wondrous self-sustaining piece of living mechanism, 
 which, if not interfered with, shall, by imperceptible grada- 
 tions, bring its movements to a close, and still itself to rest. 
 The Bridgewater chemist has engaged to demonstrate that 
 the vital steam which makes the living engine go, shall ever 
 be supplied ; that the fuel that evolves the steam, the air 
 that burns the fuel, and the oil that lubricates the hinges, 
 shall constantly be forthcoming, and anatomist, physiologist, 
 and chemist together have exclaimed, as did Belshazzar's 
 courtiers of old, O king ! O animal ! ' live for ever,' when 
 Death's spectral fingers on the wall write, ' Mene, Mene,' 
 and the life that was to be so abiding, in one moment is 
 gone. 
 
 It must, we think, be acknowledged, that as the sudden 
 blotting out, or extinction, of one of the planets of our 
 system would appal and terrify us, so the extinction in its 
 prime of even a single animal, still more of several, would, 
 and does amaze us. It throws a dark shadow over the de- 
 light with which we had witnessed the happy movements 
 and abounding life of the joyous creature, to see it cut off 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 37 
 
 prematurely, with deep capacities of enjoyment unsatisfied, 
 and a thousand desires unfulfilled. All the evidence pre- 
 viously brought forward in proof of benevolent design, and 
 all the conviction thereby induced of beneficent purpose, 
 only make the mystery and the sorrow the greater. When 
 a crazy old hulk, often patched and mended, and long leak- 
 ing through every seam, at length becomes water-logged 
 and swamped in some sluggish canal, we mourn little over 
 its loss ; but when a ' President' steam-ship, with its gigantic 
 engine beating like a great heart, its mighty paddles like 
 revolving limbs, its fire-throat breathing forth smoke and 
 flames, its wing-like sails, its busy crew, and gay and gal- 
 lant company of seafarers, founders in mid ocean, who can 
 find words for his sorrow ? No sophistry, we think, of 
 ingenious, one-sided advocates can alter this feeling. A 
 watch, to take the famous Paley example, was made to go, 
 to be wound up and to wind down ; not to be broken to 
 pieces. An animal appears made to exist through various, 
 phases, and finally to bring peacefully its motions to a close ; 
 not to have its life suddenly taken away, and its movements 
 abruptly arrested. 
 
 In one way only can our feeling of grief at the failure of 
 benevolent design be removed or appeased namely, by evi- 
 dence being adduced to show, that some higher and more 
 comprehensive scheme of love than the one we have as- 
 sumed to regulate this world, demanded the apparently non- 
 benevolent, we will not say the malevolent, interferences 
 which have so perplexed us. Whether any such higher 
 scheme can wholly or in part be discovered, we shall pre- 
 sently consider. 
 
 Before doing so, however, it is necessary to discuss a 
 question much more difficult, in reference to the subject 
 before us, than the one the consideration of which we have 
 
3 3 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 just adjourned. Death, which is not necessarily unbenevo- 
 lent, not only reigns over organic nature, but something 
 shows itself, far more anomalous in a happy world namely, 
 pain ; and where violent death and pain go together, and are 
 constantly manifesting themselves, the anomaly reaches its 
 height. It awakens, and must awaken, the saddest feelings, 
 to consider that pain appeared in this world as soon as ani- 
 mal life did, and that they have reigned side by side, mini- 
 stering to each other and to death, not only since man was 
 placed on the globe, but for untold centuries before. 
 
 We take this as our second example of physical evil. 
 Death, we have seen, tramples out and defaces design. 
 We are now to consider pain, which mocks and distorts it. 
 It comes within the sphere of chemistry to discuss even pain, 
 for perhaps the greatest cause of its infliction is the slaughter 
 of one animal for food by another, and the science we are 
 specially discussing, is perplexed to account for such an ar- 
 rangement, since, according to the results of chemical ana- 
 lysis, carnivorous animals might have been fed otherwise 
 than by living on their herbivorous companions. 
 
 We have already referred to the evidence which geology 
 supplies, of Death having triumphed throughout the early 
 epochs of this earth's existence. The leaves of her stone 
 book, however, have written on them, not merely records 
 of death, but likewise of pain. The fossil fishes which 
 abound in many of our strata, are not found stretched out 
 in the postures of repose, which they would have assumed 
 had they perished calmly, but like men who die in battle, 
 with agony upon them, their bodies are thrown into violent 
 contortions. Each has petrified its last convulsions, and, 
 like the Laocoon and the Dying Gladiator, shows its mortal 
 throes sculptured in stone. 
 
 These immortal agonizing statues are not strange, solitary 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 39 
 
 figures. We gaze with wonder at the world-famous Elgin 
 marbles of the British Museum, and sympathize with the 
 expressive looks of agony which the fighting Centaurs and 
 Lapithae have worn for ages. Whatever else be observed 
 in these beautiful works of art, he who runs may read in 
 them a plain tale of combat and strife, a struggle for life 
 and death, mortal blows struck, pain relentlessly inflicted, 
 and weakness giving way before the superior strength which 
 unsparingly smites it down. When we tear ourselves re- 
 luctantly away from these wondrous sculptures, and pass to 
 the Geological Hall in the same museum, another set of 
 friezes appears, older by ages, perhaps by millions of years, 
 than those of the Parthenon ; carved by a chisel far excel- 
 ling that of Phidias ; telling of creatures, stranger even than 
 centaurs, and of battles more terrible than those that have 
 been fighting in marble for centuries between these mon- 
 sters and their human foes ; different as everything else is, 
 the story, however, is the same. 
 
 The heroes of the geological bas-reliefs are ichthyosaurs, 
 plesiosaurs, and pterodactyles, lizard-birds, gigantic croco- 
 diles, strangely compounded and Titanic Gorgons, and 
 chimeras dire, such as we thought could be witnessed only 
 in nightmare dreams, till with forms more hideous than eye 
 had seen, or ear heard of, or it had entered into the heart 
 to conceive, we gaze on their stone effigies before us. In 
 their lifetime, those strange beings were all of them war- 
 riors. The mortar-cap, the chiselled chain-shirt, and cross- 
 hilted sword of a recumbent monumental figure, do not 
 more plainly tell that below lie the bones of a soldier cru- 
 sader, than the fierce jaws, great rows of dagger-like teeth, 
 cruel fangs, sharp claws, and other accoutrements of those 
 stone mummies, proclaim that their possessors were the 
 Black Hussars of the pre-Adamite world, and gave no 
 
40 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 quarter. The Parthenon figures only repeat the story of 
 the Gorgon Frieze ; in the latter we as plainly read as in 
 the former, battle and murder, strength remorselessly van- 
 quishing weakness, and the victim reaching death through 
 the appointed stages of torture and agony. 
 
 This tale of suffering, like those dark legends which are 
 found in every country, is repeated all over the globe. 
 Wherever the geologist digs, he finds pain ' graven on 
 the rock for ever.' A museum of fossil-bones is like the 
 arsenal of a warlike nation. Weapons of destruction, 
 teeth, claws, and horns, the swords, daggers, and spears of 
 life militant, far outnumber toothless jaws and inoffensive 
 mouths, the reaping-hooks and plough-shares of the peace- 
 ful herbivora. 
 
 We have referred to past, rather than to present evi- 
 dences of pain, because for one thing it stands out from 
 everything else, when taken in connexion with creatures 
 which had not that minister of woe to them, man, to in- 
 volve them in misery ; because for another, the problem is 
 every way more simple ; because also, it shows that animal 
 suffering is older than human happiness ; and, lastly, be- 
 cause it proves what we wish to insist on in the face of all 
 attempts to gloss the fact over viz., that physical suffer- 
 ing, in relation to the lower animals, is no incidental, tran- 
 sient, or, as it were, interpolated thing, but that, histori- 
 cally, it is ingrained, and inseparably interwoven, into the 
 whole fabric of our system. 
 
 But if we have not referred to the present, it has not 
 assuredly been because suffering has become a dim legend, 
 traceable only in obscure geological hieroglyphics, hidden, 
 as it were purposely, from us in the dark recesses of the 
 earth. 
 
 To avoid complication of the question, and the considera- 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 41 
 
 tion of the topics with which physical science cannot deal, 
 let us put man and his sufferings aside, and look only at the 
 lower animals, and their agonies. And as our space is 
 limited, let a single case be selected, in evidence that pain 
 is no forgotten pre-Adamite thing, but makes the whole 
 creation groan and travail even now. We ask the Bridge- 
 water natural theologian, who talks only of beneficent design, 
 to reconcile with that beneficence this one fact, that there 
 are myriads of animals which live only by destroying and 
 devouring their fellows. Astronomers are familiar with a 
 problem of great difficulty, called that of three bodies, which 
 requires determination of the question, how will three of the 
 heavenly bodies act and re-act on each other, in influencing 
 and disturbing their several motions ? We shall not pro- 
 pose so difficult a question to our Bridgewater author, but 
 be content with requesting, at his hand, a solution of a 
 problem of two bodies. It shall be this : given a carnivo- 
 rous animal and the defenceless creature which it devours 
 to reconcile the suffering and death of the latter, with 
 benevolence on the part of the Creator. Our problem- 
 solver shall not escape, as he generally does, by discussing 
 animals singly, dwelling upon the contrivances for its wel- 
 fare which each animal exhibits in the construction of its 
 parts, and stopping there. We acknowledge that a lamb 
 is, per se, as benevolently fashioned as a lion ; but taken 
 together, we ask demonstration of benevolence caring for 
 both. If we let the lion live, he will slay the lamb. If we 
 take away the lamb, the lion will die. The two animals 
 are, in the language of medical prescription, incompatibles ; 
 like an acid and an alkali, they cannot exist together. 
 
 If God, as revealed in nature, be, as Professor Fownes 
 tells us he is, ' a being of unmixed benevolence,' what is to 
 be made of this phenomenon ? It is not an exception which 
 
4 2 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 proves the rule, but in regard to a great number of animals, 
 the rule which has no exception. It is not by accident, or 
 incidentally, that a beast of prey kills : he was made to 
 destroy. If any one doubt this, let him study the construc- 
 tion of one of the carnivorous animals. We shall not pro- 
 pose for consideration the lion, for he has a poetical credit 
 for magnanimity, which might enlist the imagination in his 
 favour, nor the beautiful tiger, nor the sun-loving eagle. 
 Let us take an animal low in the scale of organization, and 
 to which, therefore, nature might be expected to be more 
 niggard of contrivances for its welfare, than she is to nobler 
 creatures ; and let it be one which no poet invests with 
 imaginary virtue, nor any one regards with other feelings 
 than those of horror. Let our example of a carnivorous 
 animal be the shark. No author of ' Bridge water Trea- 
 tises,' or Actonian Prize Essayist, need ask a better evi- 
 dence of beneficent design, so far as the individual animal 
 is concerned, than the construction of the shark supplies. 
 Its body is fashioned so as to offer the least resistance to 
 the water through which it is to cleave its way, and enable 
 it to move forward with a maximum velocity. Great as 
 we are as a maritime nation, the accumulated skill of many 
 generations has not taught us to build a vessel which can 
 equal, or come near to, the shark in speeding through the 
 sea. We have experimental squadrons on the waters, and 
 read every day of one ship not being able to sail with the 
 wind, and of another not being able to beat up against it ; 
 of one failing in reefing, and another in tacking ; of all 
 being faulty in some way. Our steam-ships are constantly 
 being taken down, to have their engines altered, their masts 
 lengthened or shortened ; their whole equipments con- 
 structed on new, but, as it often proves, on still more 
 erroneous principles than before. Our experimental squad- 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 43 
 
 rons must be objects of rare diversion to the fishes in the 
 sea. Millions of millions of sharks have swum in the 
 ocean, but no one has ever needed to be taken down to 
 have his engine or heart shifted further forward or further 
 back, or has required his paddles or screw-propellers, his 
 fins or tail, to be adjusted at a new angle. No one of them 
 ever misses stays, or goes upon a lee shore, or wrecks upon 
 a rocky coast j but each, without compass or chart, sex- 
 tant or chronometer, lunar or solar observations, is his own 
 helmsman and stoker, pilot and engineer, and his little 
 living yacht leaves men-of-war behind it, and can give 
 distance to a Transatlantic steamer, and beat her in the 
 race. 
 
 God has been very kind to the shark. Swiftness will not 
 serve his prey to escape from the swifter fins which wing 
 his pursuer, like a fiery-poisoned arrow, to strike through 
 the heart of his victim. The keen nostrils of the destroyer 
 c scent the prey from afar,' and conduct him, with unerring 
 certainty, through great tracts of sea, to the ship where the 
 invalid, near to death, will soon reward him for his waiting. 
 His great eyes are much more beautiful, in some respects, 
 than our own. At the back of each, is a brilliant reflecting 
 mirror, so that in the depths of the gloomy ocean, the 
 faintest ray of light can be turned to account, and nothing 
 but utter darkness can hide from him his prey. His teeth, 
 in triple rows, keen-edged, like scimitars, stand like the 
 spikes of a portcullis on his cruel jaws, and one snap of 
 them will lop a limb away. Would our Actonian Essayist 
 like to be the prey of this beneficently-constructed animal, 
 or seek to taste its tender mercies ? Would he be willing 
 to thrust his limbs into the shark's jaws, and find in his 
 mutilation and agony an evidence of unmixed benevolence ? 
 
 God disowns all these pretences to prove him the author 
 
44 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 of indiscriminate benevolence. The young lions roar to 
 him for their prey, and seek their meat from God, and are 
 answered as certainly as the lambs which bleat gently for 
 green pastures. To the one as well as to the other he 
 gives its meat in due season. c His tender mercies are over 
 all his works.' Physical science has affected to prove what 
 even revelation does not profess to demonstrate viz., that 
 God shows himself to his creatures as an indiscriminately 
 benevolent Being. God does not. ' He maketh darkness 
 his secret place ; his pavilion around him are dark waters, 
 and thick clouds of the skies.' ' His ways are not our 
 ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts.' 
 
 Pain is no transient, incidental, occasional thing. It has 
 pleased God, for purposes which physical science cannot 
 divine, to provide for its constant infliction. One animal is 
 commanded by its instincts not only to slay, but also to tor- 
 ture another. The cat does not merely kill the mouse, but 
 is permitted to delight in its agonies. As for the explana- 
 tions which Bridgewater and other treatises have professed 
 to give, they need not detain us long. Some tell us that it 
 was necessary that carnivorous animals should exist. We 
 know not how the necessity can be established. The flesh 
 of the lion is identical with that of the lamb ; there is not 
 the slightest difference between them. The scriptural 
 declaration that c all flesh is grass,' admits of the most 
 literal chemical interpretation. The edible plants on which 
 herbivorous animals feed, contain not merely the elements 
 of their bodies, but their very substance. Muscular flesh 
 and fat, red blood, milk, and wheat-flour are the same 
 bodies with their particles differently arranged. All that is 
 in the one is in the other. The plant, as has been beauti- 
 fully said, acts towards the animal as the hewer does to the 
 builder it supplies the animal with carved stones and chi- 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 45 
 
 sailed materials, which the latter appropriates as it finds, 
 and builds in to suit the scheme of its own edifice. The 
 carnivorous animal finds nothing in the creature it devours, 
 which it might not have derived from the vegetable food 
 out of which the flesh of its prey was transmuted. For 
 anything chemistry can show to the contrary, the lion 
 might even now eat straw like the ox. 
 
 Again, we are told that but for the carnivorous destroyers, 
 the herbivora would so accumulate as to become a nuisance. 
 This, like the last declaration, is a mere c darkening of 
 counsel by words without knowledge.' Could the Almighty 
 not have lessened the fecundity of the harmless animals, in- 
 stead of increasing it, only that its fruits might be cut off 
 violently in their very prime ? might he not have short- 
 ened the lives of the herbivora, and have brought them, 
 after a brief and rose or butterfly-like life of happiness, 
 gently to a close ? If such modes of painlessly disposing of 
 animals occur to us^ how many more must be present to 
 the counsels of the almighty, all-knowing God ! 
 
 Lastly, some have told us that the physical scheme we 
 are under, is such as to secure the greatest happiness to the 
 greatest number of living creatures. It may be so ; but no 
 science can show that such is the case. It is a fond hope 
 of the heart, not a believed truth of the intellect. The 
 afflicted patriarch of Uz exclaimed of old, c O that my 
 grief were thoroughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the 
 balances together ;' but scales in which such things could 
 be weighed were not to be found in Job's days, and are still 
 wanting in ours. Chemistry is, of all the sciences, the one 
 that most frequently uses the balance. She can weigh 
 many things, but is not able to put suffering in one scale 
 and happiness in the other, and to pronounce that the latter 
 outweighs the former. Pain cannot be expressed by sym- 
 
46 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 bols, or agony reduced to formulae. And even if science 
 could show a preponderance of happiness, we should still, 
 constituted as we are, murmur that the greatest happiness 
 to the greatest number, did not signify unalloyed happiness 
 to all. 
 
 Chemistry, then, shows a dark as well as a bright side, 
 when appealed to by the natural theologian. The first ex- 
 ample we have selected is a positive one : it exhibits Nature 
 deliberately poisoning whole races of animals at once. The 
 second is a negative, but not less instructive one : it shows 
 Nature not availing herself of the resources of chemistry to 
 maintain life without the infliction of pain, but preferring to 
 make animal existence dependent on suffering and death. 
 
 It is a great defect in the works of Dr. Prout and Pro- 
 fessor Fownes, that examples of physical evil, such as we 
 have supplied, are not furnished, or taken into consideration, 
 in their discussion of the argument for design. Thoughtful 
 young men, struggling to attain right views of God, who 
 will be the most earnest readers of these and similar volumes, 
 may be delighted with their science, but will soon perceive 
 the one-sidedness of the view maintained. It is the ' evil 
 that is in the world,' not the good, that perplexes us ; and 
 we rise with something like a sense of a wrong having been 
 done us, from books which, instead of helping us to an 
 understanding or explanation of that evil, quietly ignore it, 
 as if non-existent or non-important, and boldly insist on our 
 declaring that ' all is very good.' Natural and revealed re- 
 ligion are alike exposed to contempt by such treatment of 
 the former, and the disappointed and provoked student is 
 driven to the somewhat excusable, but unjust conclusion, 
 that natural theology cannot in any satisfactory way dispose 
 of the evil that perplexes its discussions, and is in conse- 
 quence compelled to thrust it out of sight. Those who 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 47 
 
 come to this conclusion, often cease to put faith in the 
 argument from design at all. 
 
 It is in treatises on the physical sciences that the defect 
 we are lamenting is most liable to occur j for psychology 
 and ethics cannot possibly be discussed without compelling 
 the consideration of evil as well as good ; but pleasant, 
 readable, and most instructive volumes may be written on 
 any one of the physical sciences, in its theological aspect, 
 which shall, nevertheless, cleverly evade almost the men- 
 tion, much more the discussion, of the real or apparent 
 failure of beneficent design. 
 
 We long to see physico-theology treated in another way. 
 It would set many an anxious mind so far at least at rest, to 
 know that science honestly and deliberately acknowledged 
 the existence of evil, even though it left it an utterly unex- 
 plained mystery. 
 
 We cannot here enter into a discussion of what physical 
 science can do in the way of solving the enigma. We 
 desire only for the present to turn the attention of the stu- 
 dents of physics to the dark, as well as to the bright side of 
 nature, and to crave them to offer us their views on the 
 former, as well as on the latter. Nevertheless^ a word may 
 be added, for the sake of our readers, as to the bearing 
 which the existence of physical evil has on the cogency of 
 the argument from design for a beneficent God. 
 
 The co-existence in this world of life and happiness with 
 suffering and death, leads directly to two questions Do 
 animal happiness and animal suffering flow from the same 
 source ? Is an evil as well as a good being at work in the 
 world ? 
 
 In ancient times, and in different countries, a sect existed, 
 known best to us by the title of Manicheans, who held that 
 an evil as well as a benevolent power had a share in the 
 
48 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 control of all things on this earth. By those holding such 
 a view, all the evil would be referred to the Caco-demon, 
 or malignant agent, and all the good to the Agatho-demon, 
 or good being. The Indian, Persian, Egyptian, and later 
 Alexandrian schools were full of this doctrine. The greatest 
 men of antiquity, however, held no such view, but referred 
 the evil and the good to one source, counting the former 
 either a result of the necessary imperfections of the world- 
 system, or acknowledging it to be a mystery inexplicable. 
 We refer to such opinions, because we think it is very diffi- 
 cult for us, who consciously, or unconsciously, have had all 
 our notions of God modified by what we have learned of 
 Him from the Bible, to be certain what conclusion we 
 should have come to, if we had not enjoyed the benefits of 
 a direct revelation. We are certain, however, that science 
 lends no support to a Manichean doctrine. The evil and 
 the good in nature are inextricably intertwined, and cannot 
 be unravelled or disentangled from each other. What is 
 evil in one aspect is good in another, and the two must be 
 taken together, and dealt with as a whole. 
 
 We have no apprehension, accordingly, that the deepest 
 study of any of the physical sciences will lead to the conclu- 
 sion that this earth exhibits the results of divided counsels, 
 or that such a lesson will ever be taught, as that the happi- 
 ness of the lower animals is an expression of God's will, and 
 their sufferings the contrivance of some antagonistic evil 
 demon. All science, we believe, will, with increasing dis- 
 tinctness, join in proclaiming, with Revelation, that ' the 
 earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof.' It will then 
 only remain for science to make the fullest proclamation 
 that evil exists, and the frankest confession that she cannot 
 account for it. A dark reality is often more tolerable than 
 a grievous doubt ; a hopeless mystery disturbs the spirit less 
 
Chemistry and Natural Theology. 49 
 
 than a difficult, though quite soluble, problem. There are 
 many excellent people afraid, in the face of our natural 
 theologies, to say that physical evil exists, lest they should 
 be thought to impeach God's goodness, and yet troubled by 
 the conviction that evil there is. Let such be emancipated 
 from their bondage, by hearing the student of physical 
 science ex cathedra declare that in this world there is 
 'shade' as well as 'sunshine;' and for those who never 
 could be cheated into the belief that evil was not, or was 
 good, and who stand astonished at its existence, let there 
 be reply also. So long as men look upon the origin, and 
 existence of moral or physical evil as a problem which can 
 be solved by logic, they will struggle to the very death to 
 reach the solution ; but when they discover that in this 
 world a solution of the difficulty cannot be attained, they 
 will cease to combat with it, and transfer it from the region 
 of the intellect to that of the heart, as a sad and solemn 
 mystery which, with closed lips, will haunt them to their 
 graves. 
 
 Let such hear science acknowledge, that if Plato and 
 Socrates, Aristotle and Galen, could find no plummet able 
 to reach the depth of the mystery of the existence of evil, 
 Newton, Laplace, Herschel, Dalton, or Davy, have not 
 been able to add one inch to the fathom-line, or make it go 
 deeper. They may then, after looking the existent evil in 
 the face till they cease to fear it, perceive that it does not 
 swallow up the good or reduce it to zero, but simply dis- 
 turbs and perplexes it ; but whether they reach this con- 
 clusion or not, let the truth be plainly spoken and acknow- 
 ledgment frankly made, that after all our natural theologies 
 and prize essays, our eight commissioned Bridgewater 
 Treatises, and ninth volunteered one, physical science 
 must acknowledge that suffering is an enigma which she 
 
 D 
 
50 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 cannot unriddle. Chemistry, for example, can prove that 
 God is light, but not that c in him is no darkness at all ; ' 
 she can show that God has love, but not that he is love. 
 Before that can be demonstrated to us, to borrow a beauti- 
 ful idea of Bacon's, we must pass from Vulcan to Minerva ; 
 we must turn our backs upon physics and upon all human 
 science, and gaze in another direction, ere we shall be able 
 to affirm that ' the darkness is past, and the true light 
 shineth,' or comfort ourselves with the assurance that ' life 
 and immortality are brought to light.' The mystery of 
 pain will haunt our whole lives, and will probably never be 
 felt so keenly as when we are tasting the bitterness of 
 death, and are about for ever to exchange the pangs of this 
 life for the unknown conditions of the life to come. Mean- 
 while, we are certain that God's benevolence is as infinite 
 as his other attributes, and cannot doubt that some great 
 purpose is served by the suffering of innocent animals. It 
 may yet be given to us to know what it is. And even in this 
 world, all who believe in revelation may contemplate with 
 a joyous eye the good that is in it, and adjourn the explana- 
 tion of the evil as something traversing, but not neutraliz- 
 ing or annihilating its opposite. Suffering and death may 
 veil, but do not blot out an all-merciful God from our view. 
 The curtain is thick, but light shines through, and words 
 of hope are uttered to all who have ears to hear them. 
 ' Be still, and know that I am God.' ' I form the light, 
 and create darkness.' c I make peace, and create evil.' 
 ' I have created the waster to destroy.' c I will swallow 
 up death in victory.' 
 
THE CHEMISTRY OF THE STARS 
 
 AN ARGUMENT TOUCHING THE STARS AND THEIR 
 INHABITANTS. 
 
 MACAULAY'S History of England is now in its fifth 
 edition ; Layard's Nineveh is in its third ; and within a 
 few weeks of the second edition of Sir John Herschel's 
 Astronomy J it was out of print, and a new issue, equivalent 
 to a third edition, is now on sale. So large a demand as 
 these successive editions imply, is a silent but most striking 
 tribute to the interest of the subjects discussed in those 
 works, and the skill of the writers who have handled them. 
 A reviewer may, in these circumstances, safely take for 
 granted that, instead of entering into a critical analysis of 
 works, already judged and approved by his and their readers, 
 he may profitably make them the occasion of an excursus 
 into regions of speculation, which such volumes have ren- 
 dered patent to all. We propose to do so on the present 
 occasion with Sir John Herschel's delightful work. It does 
 
 1 (i.) The Stars and the Earth, or Thoughts upon Space, Time, and Eternity. 
 1847. London. Bailliere. 
 
 (2.) Outlines of Astronomy. By Sir John F. W. Herschel, Bart., K.H., etc. etc. 
 Second Edition. London: Longman, 1849. 
 
 (3.) Reports on American Meteorites. By Charles Upham Shepard, M.D., Pro- 
 fessor of Chemistry, South Carolina, etc. 1848. New Haven, U. S., Hamlen. 
 
5 2 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 not call for formal praise. The younger Herschel occupies 
 the first rank among astronomers. He is second only to 
 Humboldt in extensive and minute acquaintance with all 
 the physical sciences, and is his equal in wide general cul- 
 ture and fine taste, and in skill as a writer. This is so 
 well 'known, and so fully appreciated, that we say no more 
 on the subject, but quote at once a passage from Sir John's 
 preface, which will justify the use which we make of his 
 work, and serve as a text for the present remarks : 
 
 ' If proof were wanted of the inexhaustible fertility of 
 astronomical science in points of novelty and interest, it 
 would suffice to adduce the addition to the list of members 
 of our system of no less than eight new planets and satel- 
 lites during the preparation of these sheets for the press.' x 
 
 From the inexhaustibly fertile field here referred to, we 
 select one point for consideration, and invite our readers, for 
 a brief space, to the discussion of an argument touching the 
 nature of the stars and their inhabitants. 
 
 To prevent any misconception as to the scope of what 
 follows, we wish it to be understood at the very outset, that 
 we shall enter into no discussion as to the probability or 
 improbability of the heavenly bodies being inhabited. We 
 shall take for granted that they possess inhabitants, or 
 rather shall put 'the question thus : ' If the stars are in- 
 habited, is it probable that the dwellers on them resemble 
 those on this star, or Earth, or is it more likely that they 
 are non-terrestrial beings, unlike us, and our plant and 
 animal companions, and different in different stars ? ' 
 
 We are not anxious to compel the conclusion, that all 
 the stars are inhabited. Many of the excellent of the earth 
 have held that they universally are, and that, too, by rational 
 creatures ; and have thought that the denial of this did in- 
 
 1 Herschers Astronomy , p. 8. 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 53 
 
 justice to our own convictions, and to the omnipotence and 
 bounty of God. But our standard of Utilitarianism can 
 never be a safe one by which to estimate the works of Him 
 whose ways are not as our ways, nor does it require the 
 view supposed. 
 
 It would not be a painful, but a pleasant thing, surely, 
 to learn that some of the stars, such as the new planet 
 Flora, were great gardens, like Eden of old before Adam 
 was created ; gardens of God, consecrated entirely to vege- 
 table life, where foot of man or beast had never trod, nor 
 wing of bird or insect fanned the breeze ; where the trees 
 never crackled before the pioneer's torch, nor rang with the 
 woodman's axe, but every flower was 
 
 ' Born to blush unseen, 
 And waste its sweetness on the desert air.' 
 
 Neither is it the remembrance of the Arabian Nights, 
 nor thought of Aladdin's lamp, that makes us add that we 
 should rejoice to learn that there was such a thing as an 
 otherwise uninhabited star, peopled solely by magnificent 
 crystals. What a grand thing a world would be, contain- 
 ing, though it contained nothing else, columns of rock- 
 crystal like icebergs, and mountains of purple amethyst, 
 domes of rubies, pinnacles and cliffs of emeralds and dia- 
 monds, and gates and foundations of precious stones, such 
 as John saw in the Holy Jerusalem descending out of 
 heaven ! All who reach the Happy Land are to enter 
 heaven as little children, and it may please God, besides 
 other methods of instruction, to teach his little ones his 
 greatness and his power, by showing them such a world as 
 we have imagined. 
 
 And even if some heavenly messenger, c Gabriel that 
 stands in the presence of God,' or one of the other angels 
 that excel in strength, should descend amongst us, and pro- 
 
54 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 claim, ' There is no life of any kind in any star but the 
 earth,' should we be entitled to murmur at the news? 
 Such is the pride and selfishness of man, that he does not 
 hesitate to proclaim any world a desert, from which himself 
 or his fellows are excluded. But even if it should be cer- 
 tain that every star but the earth is a ball of lifeless granite, 
 or barren lava, it would be for us, if we were wise, to say 
 of it, as the Psalmist would have said, c Whither shall I go 
 from thy Spirit ? or whither shall I flee from thy presence ? ' 
 In the most deserted and solitary of worlds, as we might 
 call it, God is present. The fulness of him that filleth all 
 in all, fills it ; the Saviour and the Holy Spirit are there. 
 If our ears were not stopped like the deaf adder's, we 
 should, if visitants of such an orb, hear a voice say, c Put 
 off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou 
 standest is holy ground.' We leave, then, the question of 
 the universal habitation of the heavenly bodies untouched, 
 and intend, moreover, to refer chiefly to the nature of the 
 stars, and not to that of their inhabitants. The character 
 or quality of the dwellers in the heavenly bodies is, doubt- 
 less, a more generally attractive topic than that of their habi- 
 tations, as most thoughtful men would consider a forlorn 
 and degraded savage a more truly interesting object than 
 the grandest palace. Our only hope, however, in the 
 meanwhile, of ascertaining anything concerning the dwellers 
 in the stars, is founded upon what we discover concerning 
 the stars themselves. 
 
 The direction in which our argument must proceed may 
 be stated in a word. If we made out a rude structure on 
 the summit of a cliff, to have all the characters of an eagle's 
 nest, we should fairly enough infer that its inhabitants were, 
 or had been, eagles ; if we were satisfied that another erec- 
 tion was a beaver's dam, we should judge that beavers dwelt 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 55 
 
 within, A bee-hive would imply bees ; a burrow, foxes ; 
 a mole-hill, moles ; and so, if, among the heavenly bodies, 
 we discover stars identical with our earth, we may pretty 
 safely infer that they are, or may be, or may have been, 
 inhabited by beings like ourselves. Direct observations on 
 the dwellers in the stars, if dwellers there be, it is not likely 
 we shall ever succeed in making. Of the inhabitants of 
 the sun we shall probably never know more, than that the 
 apostle John saw in vision an angel in it ; and as for the 
 nearest of the heavenly bodies, we may be thankful that in 
 early life, we saw with our own eyes, as the reader knows 
 he did, the man in the moon, as it is not likely that any of 
 us who have reached maturer years shall ever see him again. 
 Isaac Taylor thinks that our sun c may be a world of bliss, 
 the abode of creatures endowed with incorruptibility and 
 immutability;' in a word, Heaven. Others, whose names 
 we are glad to leave in oblivion, have looked upon the sun 
 as the world of woe. John Foster thought that its inhabi- 
 tants might be c square, orbicular,' or, as he shrewdly adds, 
 c of any other form.' We are not about to emulate these 
 authors. The question we shall try to answer is the much 
 simpler one, c Are the stars and their inhabitants terrestrial 
 or non-terrestrial, earthly or non-earthly ? ' 
 
 Great men have held it probable that the stars are ter- 
 restrial in nature, i.e., fashioned of the same materials, 
 and generally constructed like the earth. Sir Isaac Newton 
 was of this opinion. So, to some extent, were Laplace 
 and the elder Herschel. Humboldt has adopted it, and 
 Mulder, the distinguished chemist of Holland. Isaac 
 Taylor, in his Physical Theory of Another Life, has en- 
 larged upon it with characteristic ingenuity and eloquence. 
 It has been widely brought before the public by Professor 
 Nichol, and the author of the Vestiges of the Natural 
 
5 6 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 History of Creation, and thus it has become a subject of 
 popular interest. 
 
 The question may at first sight appear to be one which, 
 however attractive to, the unscientific, cannot be pronounced 
 upon by them ; and such certainly is its character. Yet it 
 may be curious to inquire what the decision of the general 
 public is likely to be on a subject so alluring to unreined 
 speculation ; and it has been strongly held by certain of the 
 advocates of the telluric or terrestrial nature of the heavenly 
 bodies, that the untutored perception of analogy, and the 
 unaided common sense of mankind, would justify the con- 
 clusion which they favour. Nay, it has been urged that 
 the prejudices of the more lettered and scientific portion 
 of the public incline them to prefer the theory of a non- 
 terrestrial chemistry, although it is difficult to see how this 
 can be the case. To satisfy all parties, however, we shall 
 in the first place try, if possible, to learn what the so-called 
 common sense verdict is, or rather would be ; and as we 
 can appeal to no existing document as formally recording 
 it, we shall suppose a jury impanelled to try the question of 
 the chemical identity of our globe and the sidereal universe. 
 
 All Fellows of colleges and of royal societies shall be ex- 
 cluded : all doctors of all kinds, all professors, lecturers, and 
 the teaching class : all clergymen, lawyers, naval and mili- 
 tary officers, civil engineers, and in general every man who 
 puts a title before, or prints letters after his name. All 
 critics, reviewers, writers of books, and every one else 
 professionally or systematically connected with scientific 
 or with literary polemics, shall likewise be protested against ; 
 and whosoever, moreover, can be shown, on the faintest 
 suspicion, to have made science, however slightly, a matter 
 of study. From the residue of mankind, after the roll has 
 thus been purged, twelve honest men and true shall be chosen, 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 57 
 
 as strongly gifted with common sense as can be found. 
 These shall form our grand jury. The case shall be tried 
 on successive midnights, in the open court of heaven, and 
 the cause shall be argued according to a precedent supplied 
 by Napoleon, though not to be found in the Napoleon Code. 
 When the First Consul crossed the Mediterranean on his 
 Egyptian expedition, he carried with him a cohort of savans, 
 who ultimately did good service in many ways. Among 
 them, however, as might be expected at that era, were not 
 a few philosophers of the Voltaire-Diderot school. Napo- 
 leon, for his own instruction and amusement on shipboard, 
 encouraged disputation among these gentlemen ; and on one 
 occasion they undertook to show, and, according to their 
 own account, did demonstrate, by infallible logic and meta- 
 physic, that there is no God. Bonaparte, who hated all 
 idealogists, abstract reasoners, and logical demonstrators, no 
 matter what they were demonstrating, would not fence with 
 these subtle dialecticians, but had them immediately on deck, 
 and, pointing to the stars in the clear sky, replied, by way 
 of counter-argument, ' Very good, messieurs ! but who made 
 all these ? ' 
 
 We shall judge this case in the same way. The stars 
 themselves shall be appealed to for a reply to the question 
 we are curious to have answered. They shall appear at 
 the bar, and learn that a charge has been preferred against 
 them, that ' they are of the earth earthy.' The question 
 shall be put to each, c Earthly or not earthly ?' and the jury 
 shall give their verdict according to the answer returned. 
 Our twelve honest men, then, having sworn in the presence 
 of the great Judge to give a righteous verdict, shall be taken 
 to the summit of some heaven-kissing hill, and left there as 
 long as they please, to make acquaintance with the stars. 
 Far away from anxious author and captious critic, they 
 
58 R eligio- Chemici. 
 
 shall read for themselves the lesson of the universe. The 
 heavens shall declare the glory of God : the firmament show 
 his handiwork. Day unto day shall utter speech in their 
 hearing : night unto night show knowledge before them. 
 They shall watch the guiding of Arcturus and his sons : 
 and behold the bands of Orion : they shall feel the sweet 
 influences of the Pleiades, and listen to the morning stars 
 singing together. ' The Sirian star, that maketh the sum- 
 mer deadly,' shall shine forth before them on the forehead 
 of the sky, and they shall hearken to the solemn tread of 
 the host of heaven, as, drawn up in their constellations, 
 they nightly repeat their sentinel march from horizon to 
 horizon. 
 
 And when the unsatisfied senses are still filled with 
 desire, all needful help shall be furnished to gratify their 
 longing. The Herschel forty-feet telescope shall be granted 
 our jury to gaze through, and the courteous Lord Rosse 
 will not refuse the giant reflector. Pulkowa, and Altona, 
 and the Cape shall lend the best instruments of their obser- 
 vatories, and the ingenious Lassell shall record for them 
 what he witnesses with his space-piercing tube. The wise 
 and filial Herschel shall stand by to explain ; and the elo- 
 quent Arago and sweet-tongued Humboldt make the way- 
 faring man, though a stranger, at home in the universe. 
 As witnesses, however, witnesses only, shall these high 
 priests of nature be called, and speak to facts, but offer no 
 opinions. 
 
 Our twelve shall first cast a glance at our own solar sys- 
 tem, and observe that no one of its planets has the same 
 magnitude, inclination of axis, so far as that has been ob- 
 served, density, time of rotation, or arrangement of orbit ; 
 but that each, in nearly all these particulars, differs greatly 
 from its brethren. They shall notice that several of the 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 59 
 
 planets have no moons : that our Earth has one relatively 
 very large one : Jupiter, four relatively small ones : Saturn, 
 seven of greatly varying dimensions : Uranus, as is believed, 
 six ; and Neptune, two or more. They shall see the 
 splendid girdles which Saturn wears, and be warned that 
 two at least of the moons of Uranus move from east to 
 west, or in a direction opposite to that of their planet, and 
 of all the other bodies of the solar system. 
 
 The enormous differences 'in the length of the planetary 
 years shall startle them ; that of Mercury, for example, 
 being equal to about three of our months ; that of Neptune, 
 to 164 of our years. The lesser but marked diversities in the 
 length of their days shall awaken notice, the Mercurial day 
 being, like our own, twenty-four hours long, the Saturnine 
 only ten. The variations in the amount of heat and light 
 received from the sun by each of its attendants shall not be 
 forgotten ; Uranus, for example, obtaining two thousand 
 times less than Mercury, which receives seven times more 
 than the Earth. They shall also observe the extent to 
 which the planets are subject to changes of season ; the 
 Earth knowing its four grateful vicissitudes ; Jupiter know- 
 ing none ; whilst the winter in Saturn, under the shadow of 
 his rings, is fifteen years long. All those unresembling par- 
 ticulars shall be made manifest to our observant twelve. 
 Neither shall they be forgetful of those dissimilarities in 
 relation to atmosphere, and perhaps to physical constitution, 
 which astronomers have detected. When so much diver- 
 sity has been seen to shine through the unity of the solar 
 system, our twelve shall gaze forth into space, to see if all 
 be sameness there. Sameness ! They shall discern stars 
 of the first magnitude, stars of the second magnitude, of the 
 third, of the fourth, of the seventh, down to points so small, 
 even to the greatest telescopes, that the soberest of philoso- 
 
60 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 phers can devise no better name for them than star-dust ; 
 arid one of them declares ' that for anything experience has 
 hitherto taught us, the number of the stars may be really 
 infinite, in the only sense in which we can assign a meaning 
 to the word.' They shall find that the Dog-star is a sun, 
 whose light has an intrinsic splendour sixty-three times 
 greater than that of our own solar orb, and that he is not 
 counted chief of the stars. They shall search in vain 
 through the abysses for a system similar to our own, and 
 find none, but perceive instead, multitudes of double-stars 
 or twin suns, revolving round each other. They shall learn 
 that there are triple systems of suns, and that there may be 
 more complex ones ; and try to conceive how unlike our 
 planetary arrangements must be the economy of the worlds 
 to which these luminaries furnish light. They shall gaze 
 at purple and orange suns, at blue and green and yellow and 
 red ones ; and become aware of double systems where the 
 one twin appears to be a self-luminous sun, and the other a 
 dark sphere of corresponding magnitude, like a sun gone 
 out, as if modern science would assign an exact meaning to 
 Origen's reference to c stars, which ray down darkness.' 
 Herschel shall show them the sidereal clusters, many of 
 which ' convey the complete idea of a globular space filled 
 full of stars [i.e. suns] insulated in the heavens, and consti- 
 tuting in itself a family or society apart from the rest, and 
 subject only to its own internal laws.' Lord Rosse shall 
 exhibit the nebulae, resolved and unresolved. The conti- 
 nental observatories shall furnish records of those strange 
 heavenly bodies which periodically wax and wane, now 
 shining like c candles of the Lord,' now darkening with 
 Ichabod on their foreheads. Tycho Brahe shall tell of 
 those mysterious unabiding stars, which have flashed almost 
 in a moment into existence in the heavens, and have died 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 6 1 
 
 away like all precocious things prematurely, appearing as if to 
 verify the poet's prediction, that the sun himself will prove 
 a transient meteor in the sky. The Chinese astronomers 
 shall proclaim the paths of ancient comets, which neither 
 Greek nor Roman had courage or science enough to trace 
 through the heavens; and Humboldt, after describing the 
 wanderings of the comets of later days, shall supply the 
 commentary that so great are the differences among these 
 eccentric bodies, ' that the description of one can only be 
 applied with much caution to another.' The American 
 observers shall detail how thick and fast the c fiery tears ' 
 fall from the November meteors : and a thousand other 
 witnesses stand ready to affirm ' of diversity there is no 
 end.' But we may suppose our somewhat distracted twelve, 
 at this stage of the proceedings, to decline further evidence, 
 and bethink themselves what their verdict shall be. 
 
 c These stars ! ' one juryman will say a chandler we 
 may guess, or oil-merchant, or perhaps only a lamp-lighter 
 ' these stars ! these suns ! " these street lamps," as 
 Carlyle has called them, " in the city of God," are they to 
 be counted, my brethren, so many argand-burners, each 
 cast in the same mould, with wick clipped to the same 
 length, and fed with the like modicum of oil, that it may 
 spread an equal number of rays over the same square sec- 
 tion of heaven's pavement ? Nay ! are we not certain that 
 at least they differ in size and brightness ? and if thus they 
 vary in dimensions and in splendour, as well as in colour of 
 light and in mode of arrangement, is it likeliest that in other 
 respects they differ only in degree, and have all but one 
 function, or that they differ in kind and in office also ? 
 Some shall be likened to fragrant wax-candles, lighting up 
 gay drawing-rooms ; and others shall be murky torches fol- 
 lowing the dead to the tomb ; and others, Eddystone lamps 
 
6 2 Religio- Chemlci. 
 
 saving goodly ships from destruction ; and others, rainbow- 
 tinted vases, making the streets gay on coronation festivals : 
 or stroritia-fires, bidding armies begin battle ; or Bude 
 flames, illuminating halls of parliament ; or lime-ball and 
 electric lights on lofty mountain-tops, measuring arcs of the 
 globe/ 
 
 A second of the twelve shall arise, a blacksmith, or 
 stoker, by the look of him. c That visible sun of ours, it 
 should seem, is the open furnace-door of a great locomotive 
 engine, sweeping through space. Its train goes with it, 
 of Jupiter-Saturn first-class carriages, Mars-Earthly second 
 class, and Ceres-Vesta third ones ; satellite trucks being 
 here and there interspersed through the train ; and comet 
 engines provided to go special messages. Those far distant 
 stars, it should seem, are locomotives too, and like enough, 
 propel planet-trains, though no one has seen even traces of 
 the latter. But are we free to settle that each drags its 
 Jupiter, its Earth and Vesta carriages behind it, with the same 
 lord and squire passengers in the first, citizens well-to-do in 
 the second, and stout mechanics or ragged Irishmen in the 
 third ? Are the paint and lacquer, the cushions and the 
 paddings, the door-handles and the wheels, and all the 
 similar coach furniture, to be looked for in these hypothe- 
 tical trains, exactly as they are found in our sun's planet- 
 carriages ? Let us consider before we admit this, how 
 many coupled engines we see ; how many triplets and other 
 locomotive wonders, which are likely to have attendants as 
 strange as their engines, and pause before we settle that 
 space is but a railway network, traversed by up and down 
 trains, differing only in length and speed, and carrying in 
 the same vehicles the same kind of passengers and goods, at 
 the one Universal penny a mile. 
 
 ' It seems, indeed, but an appeal to our ignorance to say, 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 63 
 
 that that Sirius-engine, for example, differs nothing from 
 our Sun-locomotive but in size. Its fire is far brighter and 
 hotter than ours, and perhaps as much because it burns a 
 different sort of fuel, as because it merely burns more of the 
 same coke that our locomotive consumes. Neither does it 
 seem a self-evident proposition that the Sirian machine must 
 be made up of some sixty chemical pieces, because one of 
 the carriages of our Sun's train consists of so many. And 
 as for the train of the Dog-star, if there be one, it appears 
 not unlikely that the traffic of the regions through which it 
 runs may be very different from that of our zodiac, and that 
 the vehicles composing the suite of Sirius may differ in 
 many particulars from such as accompany our Sun. I, for 
 one at least, will say that I perceive no grounds for assum- 
 ing that where diversity prevails in relation to all the points 
 that are cognizable by us, sameness should be counted to 
 be the rule in regard to everything that is hidden from our 
 sight.' 
 
 A third juryman,' who has plainly served before the mast, 
 will make bold to ask the question 'Those ships of 
 heaven that go sailing past, each on its mysterious God- 
 commissioned errand, were it wisest to consider them a 
 fleet of herring-boats or collier brigs, some larger, some 
 smaller, but all built of the same materials, rigged in the 
 same style, and carrying the same cargo ? Or were it wiser 
 to compare ourselves to the watchers on lonely Ascension 
 Isle or solitary St. Helena, now signalling a man of war 
 with its " Mariners of England ;" then an African slaver 
 with its doleful passengers and demon-crew ; now a heavy- 
 laden Indiaman rich with the wealth of China ; then a 
 battered South Sea whaler, filled with the spoils of slaugh- 
 tered monsters of the deep ; light Tahitian schooners with 
 cocoa-nuts and arrow-root ; stout American ships with ice 
 
64 R eligio- Chemici. 
 
 for the epicures in India ; English barks, with missionaries 
 for the heathens of all lands. Oak ships, and teak ships, 
 and ships hammered out of iron ; sailing vessels, and ocean 
 steamers with paddles and screw-propellers. Danes, Dutch- 
 men, and Swedes, Frenchmen, Russians, and Spaniards, 
 each with its different build, its unlike dialect, its strange 
 flag and unresembling crew. All sizes and shapes and 
 kinds of navigable craft, with all sorts of unimaginable car- 
 goes and motley companies of sea-faring men. 
 
 4 If there are all these differences among our sailing 
 vessels, are there likely to be fewer among the ships of 
 heaven ? Do you think it probable that if by means of 
 some loudest speaking-trumpet, we could hail each shining 
 orb with " Star ahoy ! " and thereafter, by means of some 
 farthest echoing reverberating hearing-horn, could get back 
 an answer, that from every one would be returned the same 
 doleful or trivial earthly murmur Calif ornian Diggings ; 
 Kaffre War -, Ministers Outvoted; Fete at Paris ; Insurrec- 
 tion in China ; His Holiness the Pope's last Bull. 
 
 ' My friends, think of this. In the azure sea above us, 
 there are no shores or landing-places ; it is one boundless 
 PACIFIC OCEAN, where the frailest bark never hides be- 
 hind a bulwark, or drops anchor in a storm. The fleets of 
 heaven are all phantom ships, for ever sailing, but never 
 nearing port. If they are all then as nearly as possible 
 identical, why are there so many ? If the nature and ob- 
 ject of each is the same, why are they not pieced together 
 so as to make up one huge vessel ? They might as well 
 have been nailed and hammered into a single mighty sun, 
 or sun-earth, lighting up, and darkening itself, while it floated 
 through space, like a gigantic Noah's ark, laden with every 
 living creature.' 
 
 This is our sailor-juryman's opinion ; but we have an 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 65 
 
 old Serjeant also among our twelve, and he claims to be 
 heard next. ' The skipper,' he begins, c the skipper has 
 likened the stars to men-of-war, and so will I, though in a 
 different sense from him, but with a view to repeat his 
 question : If the celestial bodies are all alike, why are there 
 so many of them ? The stars, I have been told, are the 
 " Host of Heaven," u the armies of the sky," and if so, 
 are something more than a regiment, and are likely to pre- 
 sent other differences than merely a grenadier company of 
 stars of the first magnitude ; a light company of stars of the 
 second ^ a mass of troops of the line, of the third ; and 
 drummer-boys of the fourth. An army, my friends, is not 
 a row of pipe-clayed men, with stiff stocks and buttoned 
 gaiters, turning their eyes to the right or the left as some 
 martinet colonel gives the word of command. It counts 
 not by men but by companies, not by companies but by 
 regiments, not by regiments but by battalions, not by bat- 
 talions but by nations. Its officers are dukes and arch- 
 dukes, kings and emperors. It has cavalry and infantry, 
 artillery battalions, rifle brigades, rocket companies, engi- 
 neers, sappers and miners. In that small matter of arms 
 and clothing how endless the difference ! Plumed bonnet, 
 helmet and shako, grenadier cap, cocked hat ; plaid, cuirass, 
 hussar-jacket, broadsword, sabre and spear, bayonet, pistol, 
 carabine and musket : all kinds of dress and equipment, 
 and every variety of weapon, worn by all sorts and con- 
 ditions of men. And if man, bent only on fighting for his 
 hearth and home, and without caring for diversity, nay, doing 
 his best to provide against it, by u tailor's uniform," " ser- 
 jeant's drill," " pipe-clay," " orders of service," and what- 
 ever else promised to smooth over differences, has never 
 been able to do more than iron straight and make uniform 
 a single regiment at a time, and that for the shortest period, 
 
 E 
 
6 6 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 how is it likely to be with that Host of Heaven as ye call 
 them ? Scarcely among earthly hosts has some latest regu- 
 lation-cap become comfortable on the head of its military 
 wearer, before he who planted it there to realize his thirst for 
 unity, has grown weary of its sameness, and must have the 
 felt shaped anew. This is the lesson that nature has taught 
 him, how not two leaves can be found alike, not even two 
 peas : and if not two alike, still less three : least of all 
 thirty or a thousand. If, moreover, among objects of the 
 same class or species every additional unit shows an addi- 
 tional difference, how much greater the probability of variety, 
 when there is a likelihood of the individuals belonging to dif- 
 ferent tribes ! Call not, then, the heavenly bodies a host, or 
 army ; or at least acknowledge that they must have mighty 
 differences among them. I say not that each " sentinel 
 star" is unlike all others. It is enough if it be unlike many. 
 There may be whole battalions of the same race, wielding 
 the same weapon, and wearing the same uniform : but will 
 this be the case with the entire army ? It was not so with 
 Pharaoh's host, or the Roman legions, with Attila's hordes 
 or Britain's army, or with any host that man has seen. I 
 ask no other evidence of diversity existing among the starry 
 night-watchers than that there are millions of millions of 
 them. Such numbers do not exhaust unity ; no numbers 
 can ; but they exclude sameness when oneness of species 
 cannot be shown ; and before we have counted even our 
 thousands, cc all things," I doubt not, " will have become 
 new." Yes ! the falchion that Orion wields is forged of 
 a different metal from the flaming sword of the comet, or 
 the fiery weapon of Mars, and the club of Hercules is carved 
 of another wood than the shaft of Bootes' spear.' 
 
 A long-haired, ample-collared young gentleman, will 
 here interrupt our rnilitaire : 4 Of regimental tailoring and 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 67 
 
 army cutlery I know nothing. But did not Byron write 
 that immortal line, 
 
 " Ye stars ! which are the poetry of heaven j" 
 
 and what think ye did he mean by that ? That our sun, 
 with the help of his family, had once since the beginning of 
 things composed an ode ; he, after much thought, giving 
 out the first line, his planets with difficulty furnishing a line 
 a piece, the moons attending to the stops, whilst the comets 
 supplied the interjections and notes of admiration. His 
 lordship, too, would intend us to understand, either that 
 copies of this remarkable production were handed round the 
 universe, or that, by a striking coincidence of genius, such 
 as happened more than once to himself and Goethe, each 
 sun with due help composed once in its existence the very 
 same family piece ; so that for millions of centuries the 
 stars have all been chanting like the children of an infant- 
 school, the same unchanging, meagre version of " the hand 
 that made us is divine." 
 
 c That might be his lordship's meaning : but might he 
 not, perhaps, intend us to understand something very dif- 
 ferent, and expect to have our sympathy with another view 
 of things ? Our earth, I think, alone engages to furnish a 
 whole epic of u Paradise Lost," through u Man's first dis- 
 obedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree," and each 
 sphere it is likely has, like Thalaba, its wild and wondrous 
 tale to tell. The poetry of heaven, according to my Lord 
 Byron, or any other of the poet guild, is no solitary sonnet, 
 or single song, but an Olympic contest of Iliads and Odys- 
 seys, epics and lyrics, tragedies and comedies, histories in 
 twenty-four books, isolated verses, single hymns, detached 
 odes, and separate songs, where the same poem is never 
 recited twice by one author, nor similar compositions made 
 
68 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 public by different poets ; but in endless diversity, a count- 
 less succession of abounding rhymes flows on, of " grave 
 and gay, and lively and severe," recounting the history and 
 the destinies of the universe, and glorifying him who sits 
 enthroned as its King.' 
 
 ' Ay ! and the music of the spheres,' will a sweet- 
 tongued juryman say ; ' is that some unaccompanied mel- 
 ody ; some " Gloria Patri" of three notes ; or " God save 
 the King" upon a single string, played endlessly upon the 
 millions of similar barrel organs that make up the universe ? 
 or is the latter some grandest cathedral organ provided not 
 merely with " vox humanaj' or earthly stops, but with un- 
 numbered Phoebus flutes, martial trumpets, Aries horns, 
 serpent clarions, and pedals touched by the feet of him who 
 walketh on the wings of the wind ? Under the vault of 
 heaven it stands a complete orchestra, now with muted 
 voice, as the fingers of God move over one starry bank of 
 keys, lisping under breath some simple melody, then, as 
 they change to another, sounding out a trumpet obligate, or 
 " when the Highest gives his voice," rolling forth with open 
 diapason a u Jupiter symphony," or guiding the Hallelujah 
 chorus of the morning stars singing together. The starry 
 choir, I ween, is no African row of monotonous performers 
 singing in unison, and able to sing only one song, but a 
 Russian horn-band, where each individual furnishes his in- 
 dispensable single, and unlike note, towards the universal 
 harmony, and the troop can execute all kinds of music : or 
 a German festival-chorus with its thousand voices, and its 
 unlike parts undulating together into one vast symphony, 
 and flowing on as a mighty river of sound. " There is no 
 speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their 
 line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the 
 end of the world."' 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 69 
 
 The chancellor, or foreman, however, of our twelve, de- 
 siring impartiality, and also, as befits his office, loving unity, 
 shall here interpose : c My friends, let not this discerning 
 of diversity prevail with us too far. From the evidence 
 laid before us it should seem, that this solar system of ours 
 is a goodly branch, on the summit of whose stem blooms a 
 brilliant sunflower, whilst round its stalk, at due distances, 
 are arranged the components of its foliage, some twenty 
 broad planet-leaves, and about as many moon-leaflets. 
 Besides these, there are myriads of sharp-pointed, swift- 
 piercing, straggling comet-thorns, which have occasioned 
 much annoyance to those who have handled them. With 
 these I shall not meddle ; but those far-distant, non- 
 planetary stars ! were it not good to count them sunflowers 
 also, of which on some branches indeed there are two on 
 one stalk, and on others three ; larger it may be in certain 
 cases, and fairer than ours, purer in their tints, and varied 
 occasionally in the hue of their petals, but sunflowers all of 
 them, and embosomed in more or fewer leaves and leaflets 
 like those on our own stem ? It were no mean and paltry 
 idea of a universe, or meagre scheme of its unity, to com- 
 pare its clustered stars to unfading flowers blossoming on 
 the branches of one great tree. I should liken it to such 
 a monarch of the wood as Nebuchadnezzar beheld in his 
 night-dream, or, better, to such as Ezekiel saw in waking 
 vision. " A cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with 
 a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature ; and his top 
 
 was among the thick boughs All the fowls of 
 
 heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under his 
 branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their 
 young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations. . . . 
 The cedars in the garden of God could not hide him : the 
 fir-trees were not like his boughs, and the chestnut-trees 
 
jo Religio-Chemici. 
 
 were not like his branches ; nor any tree in the garden of 
 God was like unto him in his beauty." 3 
 
 c Yes ! ' one will reply, ' that truly were a goodly 
 scheme, and a grand unity, but were it not a better thought, 
 productive of a grander unity, and as likely to be the true one, 
 that that starry universe is no one flowered cedar unvaried 
 in its beauty, but such a tree of life as the Daniel and 
 Ezekiel of the New Testament, the beloved apostle, saw, 
 which bare " twelve manner of fruits," and " whose leaves 
 were for the healing of the nations ? " 
 
 c And were it not,' a third will say, * grandest still, and 
 most likely, that that midnight sky shows us no Lebanon 
 with its single cedar, however stately, nor any one tree, how- 
 ever different its flowers, but a whole " Garden of God," 
 with its oaks, and its elms, and its fir-trees ; its myrtles and 
 its roses : ay, and its lilies of the valley, its daisies and vio- 
 lets too ? Yes ! stars are like stars, as flowers are like 
 flowers, but they do not resemble each other as roses do 
 roses, or lilies lilies ; but as the rose does the lily, or the 
 dark violet the star-eyed daisy.' 
 
 Our Chancellor, caught like Absalom in the branches of 
 his own metaphor, shall say no more on the matter in dis- 
 pute, but content himself with pressing for a conclusion. 
 And thereupon the twelve, various in their unity, shall stand 
 up with uncovered heads in the stillness of night, and lift 
 their unanimous voices to heaven. ' By Thee only, Judge 
 of all the earth, and all the universe, can this cause be de- 
 cided, and to the judgment of Thy supreme court do we 
 refer it for final issue. But, in the meanwhile, we are free 
 to give our verdict according to the evidence laid before us, 
 and it runs thus : 
 
 ' " There are celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial ; but the 
 glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 7 1 
 
 another. 'I here is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the 
 moon^ and another glory of the stars : star differ eth from star 
 in glory." To which verdict, we, for our part, under- 
 standing the words in their widest sense, will append our 
 heartiest Amen. 
 
 The ' fulness of him that filleth all in all ' is of its 
 essence inexhaustible, as we perhaps best realize when all 
 metaphor is set aside, and we reflect on the one quality 
 that belongs to God's attributes : namely, that they are 
 Infinite. It is part of his kindness to us, that he never lets 
 us lose sight of this great prerogative of his nature, but, 
 alike by suns and by atoms, teaches us that his power and 
 his wisdom have no bounds. 
 
 It cannot be tfrat he reveals himself otherwise in the 
 oceans of space. Were we privileged to set sail among the 
 shining archipelagos and starry islands that fill these seas, 
 we should search like marvelling but adoring children for 
 wonder upon wonder, and feel a cold chill of utter dis- 
 appointment if the widest diversity did not everywhere 
 prevail. The sense of Unity is an over-ruling power 
 which never lays aside the sceptre, and will not be dis- 
 obeyed. We should not fear that it would fade away, 
 nay, we know that it would stand forth mightiest when 
 its kingdom seemed to have sunk under overwhelming 
 diversity. Unity is in nature often nearest us exactly when 
 variety seems to have put it farthest away. We are like 
 the sailors of Magellan who first rounded the globe. Every 
 day they sailed farther, as they reckoned, from the place of 
 their departure, and ploughed what seemed to them a straight 
 line of increasing length, which had all to be retraced before 
 their first harbour could be gained : but, behold, when they 
 had sailed longest, and seemed farthest from home, they 
 had the least to sail over, and were nearest to port. Ex- 
 
72 R ellgio- Chemici. 
 
 actly when hope of return was faintest, were they called on 
 to exclaim, like the Ancient Mariner 
 
 * Oh, dream of joy ! is this indeed 
 
 The lighthouse top I see ? 
 Is this the hill ? is this the kirk ? 
 Is this my own countree ? ' 
 
 A voyage through space would in like manner turn out to 
 be a circumnavigation. We should set sail from Unity, and 
 traverse the great circle of a universe's variety, till we came 
 round to Unity again. The words on our lips, as we dropped 
 anchor, would be, ' There are differences of administrations, 
 but the same Lord ; and there are diversities of operations, 
 but it is the same God which worketh all in all.' 
 
 Our readers may be disposed to think, that in all that fcas 
 been said we have evasively begged the question. A phan- 
 tom-jury of men, professedly unlettered, but in reality bear- 
 ing the same relation to the majority of the different classes 
 they represent, that the pedlar of Wordsworth's 'Excur- 
 sion ' does to ordinary pedlars, have disposed of the problem 
 under discussion, apparently unanimously enough. But if 
 their verdict were submitted to the revision of a tribunal 
 of men of science, it may be thought doubtful whether it 
 would be ratified. Let us transfer, then, the question of 
 the terrestrial or non-terrestrial character of the heavenly 
 bodies, from the l outer court of the Gentiles,' in which we 
 have hitherto heard it argued, to the c inner court of the 
 priests,' even of the high-priests of Nature, who serve at 
 her altar, the philosophers properly so called. Our space 
 will not permit us to put on record the judgments of all of 
 them, but we may find room to chronicle the opinions of 
 three of the priestly dignitaries, the Astronomer, the Che- 
 mist, and the Physiologist, or Biologist. 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 73 
 
 A quotation from Sir John Herschel will show the judg- 
 ment of Astronomy on the question we are discussing, so far 
 as the planets are concerned. 
 
 ' Three features principally strike us as necessarily pro- 
 ductive of extraordinary diversity in the provisions by which, 
 if they be, like our earth, inhabited, animal life must be sup- 
 ported. These are,/rjf, the difference in their respective 
 supplies of light and heat from the sun ; secondly , the differ- 
 ences in the intensities of the gravitating forces which must 
 subsist at their surfaces, or the different ratios which on 
 their several globes the inertite of bodies must bear to their 
 weights ; and, thirdly , the difference in the nature of the mate- 
 rials ofwhich^ from what we know of their mean density, we 
 have every reason to believe they consist.' l 
 
 The two first points of diversity noted, refer to differences 
 in the intensity of certain influences, which, however, we 
 shall presently find are, of themselves, sufficient to make 
 terrestrial life, as we see it, impossible upon at least the 
 majority of the planets. The third is a most explicit re- 
 ference to a difference in the kind of materials of which the 
 several planets consist, which their difference in density 
 betrays. c The density of Saturn,' for example, c hardly 
 exceeds one-eighth of the mean density of the Earth, so 
 that it must consist of materials not much heavier than 
 cork.' 
 
 We shall refer to this question more particularly pre- 
 sently, when discussing the testimony of chemistry as to 
 the components of the spheres. 
 
 Direct telescopic observation, moreover, has also sup- 
 plied the astronomer with some information concerning the 
 physical constitution of the heavenly bodies, the chief points 
 of which we condense here, mainly from HerschePs minute 
 
 1 Outlines of Astronomy, p. 310. 
 
74 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 descriptions of the characteristic features of each of the 
 members of the solar system. 
 
 So far as the sun is concerned, it may suffice our present 
 purpose to say, that nothing certain is known regarding its 
 constitution. It is supposed to have a kind of triple atmo- 
 sphere, one portion of which is luminous ; the second con- 
 sists of highly reflective clouds, which float below the first, 
 and throw off its light and heat ; the third is a mass of 
 gaseous matter, believed to include the luminous and cloudy 
 portions, and to envelop the solid sphere of the sun. In 
 what condition the last is, either as to temperature or to 
 illumination, is quite uncertain ; nor is anything known in 
 relation to its composition. Observations, however, on the 
 transit of Venus over the sun's disc, have enabled astrono- 
 mers to infer that the sun has not an atmosphere of the 
 same nature as that of the earth ; and this may be said 
 to be the only matter tolerably certain concerning solar 
 chemistry. Mercury is too near the sun, Uranus and 
 Neptune too distant from it ; Vesta, Ceres, Juno, Pallas, 
 and the other minor planets, too small to permit observa- 
 tions as to the condition of their surfaces. Venus is 
 thought to have an atmosphere, and some have conceived 
 they saw hills on its disc, but the existence of these is 
 doubtful. Mars most resembles the Earth of all the planets. 
 The outlines of what are considered continents are very 
 distinct, and what seem to be seas are equally visible. The 
 polar regions, too, present appearances strongly favouring 
 the idea, that snow or ice is collected at them, thawing in 
 the martial summer, and becoming more abundant in its 
 winter. This is by far the most interesting fact, as in 
 truth it is the only positive one, so far as we know, which 
 the telescope has supplied in relation to planetary chemistry. 
 To have good reasons for suspecting that so characteristic 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 75 
 
 and important an earthly ingredient as water occurs in Mars, 
 is assuredly a matter of great interest. The more abundant 
 element of that fluid (oxygen) is also the most important 
 constituent of air, and may perhaps exist free around -the 
 planet. A globe which had water, and an oxygen atmo- 
 sphere, might certainly put in some chemical claim to be 
 a sister of the earth. But such speculation is premature. 
 The presence of water does not justify the inference that 
 free oxygen is also existent ; nor does it warrant the con- 
 clusion that more than fifty other elements must be there 
 also. It may further be noticed that the atmosphere of 
 Mars is less distinct and abundant, and much less opaque 
 and cloudy, than we should have expected in the case of 
 a planet thought to possess a great body of water. Astro- 
 nomers, however, appear to be by no means agreed, either 
 as to the nature or to the extent of the martial atmosphere. 
 Some deny that there is one at all. 
 
 The strange fiery-red light of this star, also, implies a 
 peculiar condition of its whole uncovered surface, very 
 unlike what our earth's exterior exhibits, and forbids any 
 conclusion as to the general identity of their superficial 
 condition or component ingredients. It still more forbids 
 rash inferences as to terrestrial plants and animals existing 
 on a body of unknown composition. 
 
 Nothing is known concerning the surface of Jupiter, 
 which his cloudy atmosphere conceals from inspection ; 
 but observations on the eclipses of his moons have shown 
 that that atmosphere does not sensibly refract light. It 
 therefore differs from that of the Earth ; but we have at 
 present no means of ascertaining what its constituents are. 
 The disc of Saturn is also hidden from us by a gaseous or 
 vaporous covering, the nature of which is unknown. His 
 rings are perhaps naked, but they are rarely objects of full 
 
7 6 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 telescopic observation, and the state of their surfaces has 
 not been minutely described. 
 
 The Earth's satellite is the only moon which has been 
 carefully examined ; and we can say more concerning its 
 superficial condition than that of any other of the heavenly 
 bodies. It is the least terrestrial, to appearance, of them 
 all. The moon has no atmosphere, no air, no clouds, no 
 rain, nor dew, nor lakes, nor rivers, nor seas ! It has 
 great plains and valleys, but to appearance, barren as the 
 Sahara, for the lunar seasons produce no change on them ; 
 nor have traces of vegetable or animal life been detected on 
 any part of its unfruitful surface. It has gigantic mountains, 
 nearly every one an active or extinct volcano, with craters 
 of enormous depth ; but their summits and edges, relieved 
 from the wearing and disintegrating action of air and water, 
 and unclothed with verdure, are in all cases rugged and 
 sharp, unlike the worn, or covered, and everywhere rounded 
 outlines of our hills. To this astronomical description of 
 the moon we add the remark, that there is something alto- 
 gether non-terrestrial in the existence of myriads of gigantic 
 volcanic craters, without an atmosphere floating round the 
 sphere containing them, or water existing at its surface ; 
 for all the active earthly volcanoes pour out volumes of 
 steam and other vapours and gases, which would soon re- 
 clothe our globe with an atmosphere, if it were deprived of 
 its present one. 
 
 It does not appear, then, that the telescope favours the 
 idea that a telluric or terrestrial character is common to the 
 members of the solar system. On the other hand, at the 
 sun, the moon, and Jupiter, it brings into view phenomena, 
 which, so far as we can observe them, are so marked and 
 peculiar, as to imply a state of their surfaces quite unlike 
 that of our planet. To the consideration of this we shall 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 77 
 
 return more fully, when referring to the judgment of Biology 
 on the Stars as theatres of Life. Meanwhile, we proceed 
 to inquire what decision Chemistry gives on the problem 
 before us. It is to this part of the discussion that we are 
 most anxious to direct the reader's attention, not because 
 it is intrinsically more important than the points already 
 gone over, but because of its comparative novelty, and the 
 erroneous interpretation which has been put upon it. 
 
 It might seem, at first sight, as if chemistry could have 
 nothing to say on the matter : yet for ages she has hankered 
 after an alliance with astronomy, and has chronicled the 
 fact in her nomenclature. The alchemist was an astro- 
 chemist, and twin-brother to the astrologer. Gold was 
 Sol ; silver, Luna ; iron, Mars ; lead, Saturn, etc. ; and 
 we still speak of lunar caustic, arid of martial and saturnine 
 preparations, when referring to certain of the medicinal 
 compounds of silver, iron, and lead. One of the most im- 
 portant of the metals every day reminds us, by its name, 
 Mercury, of the affinity which was once thought to connect 
 it with its namesake, the planet. The astrologist, how- 
 ever, long ago became an astronomer, and the alchemist a 
 chemist ; and for a lengthened period they had no dealings 
 together. It has been otherwise latterly. The extension 
 of both sciences has led to their meeting again, and this in 
 a somewhat singular way. 
 
 His own little Juan Fernandez island of an earth, was 
 apparently the only spot in the universe of which the 
 chemist could declare, ' I am monarch of all I survey.' 
 Towards the far- distant stars, however, he cast wistful 
 eyes. They were almost all suns, the astronomer told 
 him, which for ages had evolved light and heat, and spread 
 them through space. Can chemistry, then, which for cen- 
 turies has been explaining always more and more success- 
 
7 8 R eligio- Chemici. 
 
 fully the evolution of heat and light on this earth, give no 
 information concerning their production at the sun ? It 
 seems that perhaps it may. When a ray of sunlight is 
 passed through a prism, certain c fixed lines' or dark spaces 
 are seen in the resulting spectrum, unlike those which the 
 spectra of terrestrial flames exhibit. Sirius and Castor, as 
 well as other stars, exhibit peculiar spectra also. c Now a 
 very recent discovery of Sir D. Brewster,' as Professor 
 Graham observes, ' has given to these observations an en- 
 tirely chemical character. He has found that the white 
 light of ordinary flames requires merely to be sent through 
 a certain gaseous medium (nitrous acid vapour), to acquire 
 more than a thousand dark lines in its spectrum. He is 
 hence led to infer, that it is the presence of certain gases in 
 the atmosphere of the sun which occasions the observed 
 deficiencies in the solar spectrum. We may thus have it 
 yet in our power to study the nature of the combustion 
 which lights up the suns of other systems.' 
 
 Such is one example of the way in which chemistry has 
 sought to extend her dominion into space. Another is fur- 
 nished by the conclusions which Wollaston drew as to the 
 quality of the atmospheres of the sun and of Jupiter, from 
 the absence in them of power to refract light sensibly, as 
 shown in the case of the sun, during the transits of Venus, 
 and in that of Jupiter when his moons are eclipsed by him. 
 It has recently, however, been found possible to apply 
 chemical analysis directly to certain of the heavenly bodies, 
 so that, without extravagance, we can now declare that 
 there is a chemistry of the stars as well as of the earth. 
 
 The oft-quoted Oriental proverb, which teaches, that 
 since the c mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet 
 must go to the mountain,' has, in this case, for once, been 
 reversed ; for when the chemist could find no way of 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 79 
 
 travelling to the spheres, behold ! certain bright particular 
 stars have come to him and submitted to analysis. We 
 refer to the aerolites, meteorites, or meteoric stones, which, 
 according to the most generally adopted of many theories, 
 at one time were thought to have been projected from 
 volcanoes in the moon. They are now almost universally 
 acknowledged to have been true stars before they reached 
 our earth. For a statement of the reasons which have led 
 astronomers to this conclusion, we must refer our readers 
 to Humboldt's Cosmos^ where the whole subject is dis- 
 cussed at great length: It may suffice to say, that many 
 considerations justify the conclusion, that multitudes of 
 asteroids, starlets, or as Sir John Herschel calls them, 
 1 meteor-planets,' revolve in definite orbits round the sun, 
 and some also as invisible, or momentarily visible, minute 
 moons round the earth. The orbits of some of the former 
 are believed to resemble that of the earth, but to be in a 
 different plane, so that in the course of their revolutions 
 round the sun, these tiny planets come, at certain periods, 
 within the sphere of the earth's attraction, and are precipi- 
 tated as meteoric stones upon its surface, as weary and for- 
 lorn birds of passage, far out at sea, are entangled in the 
 rigging of vessels, and fall helpless on deck. 
 
 This modern theory of meteorites reads like a bald render- 
 ing of the poetical myth of the angels, whom earthly loves 
 induced to forfeit for ever their places in the heavens, but 
 it has invested the strange fallen stars, to which it refers, 
 with a new interest. The largest of them is but a micro- 
 scopic grain of the star-dust scattered over the sky, but it is 
 none the less of celestial origin, and may be submitted to 
 analysis. 
 
 The meteorites have accordingly been put upon the rack 
 by the chemist, and all their secrets have been tortured out 
 
8 o Religio- Chemici. 
 
 of them, but they have revealed fewer marvels than at one 
 time was expected. No new chemical element or primary 
 ingredient has been found in any of them. In other words, 
 they contain no ultimate chemical component which the 
 earth does not contain. This remarkable fact has seemed 
 to many to justify the belief, that other worlds have been 
 constructed out of the same materials as our own. It is 
 thus, for example, turned to account by the author of the 
 Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. After stating 
 that the elements, or simplest chemical constituents of the 
 globe, are those sixty or more substances which have hither- 
 to resisted all attempts to reduce them to simpler forms of 
 matter, he proceeds thus i 1 
 
 c Analogy would lead us to conclude that the modifica- 
 tions of the primordial matter forming our so-called elements, 
 are as universal, or as liable to take place everywhere, as are 
 the laws of gravitation and centrifugal force. We must 
 therefore presume that the gases, the metals, the earths, and 
 other simple substances (besides whatever more of which 
 we have no acquaintance), exist, or are liable to come into 
 existence under proper conditions, as well in the Astral 
 system, which is thirty-five thousand times more distant 
 than Sirius, as within the bounds of our own solar system, 
 or our own globe.' 2 
 
 We leave unnoticed, till we proceed with our discussion, 
 the assumption contained in the passage just quoted, that the 
 earth, considered as an aggregate of chemical substances, is 
 a type of the chemistry of the universe. It is thus justified 
 by a reference to the meteoric stones : 
 
 1 The exact number of chemical elements, or simple bodies, is uncertain, as 
 recent researches still incomplete have revealed the existence of several whose 
 chemical relations have not yet been fully ascertained. We use the integer 60 
 as sufficiently near the true number for our present purpose. 
 
 2 Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, Fifth Edition, p. 30. 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 8 1 
 
 ' What is exceedingly remarkable, and particularly worthy 
 of notice as strengthening the argument that all the mem- 
 bers of the solar system, and perhaps of other systems, have 
 a similar constitution, no new elements are found in these 
 bodies [meteorites] ; they contain the ordinary materials of the 
 earth^ but associated in a manner altogether new, and unlike 
 anything known in terrestrial mineralogy.' 1 
 
 The clause of this sentence, which we have marked by 
 italics, contrives, by an unwarrantable concealment, to 
 convey a very false impression of the true nature of meteoric 
 stones. They are said to ' contain the ordinary materials 
 of the earth/ which no doubt they do ; but it should have 
 been added, that they contain only some of them ; so far as 
 we know, but the smaller part. 
 
 We have not on record a great number of analyses of 
 meteoric stones, for they are comparatively rare ; it would 
 be premature, therefore, to decide that we know all their 
 constituents. But so far as our knowledge extends, it does 
 not appear that a third of our earthly elements has been 
 found in these bodies. Humboldt, in his Cosmos, quoting 
 from Rammelsberg, the greatest living authority on the sub- 
 ject, enumerates only eighteen of the sixty elements as 
 occurring in them. Professor Shepard counts nineteen as 
 certain, and adds two more as doubtful. It is to be ob- 
 served, on the other hand, that not only are the majority of 
 the terrestrial elements, including many of the most import- 
 ant among them, totally wanting from meteoric stones, but 
 those which are present are not mingled (as the quotation 
 indeed acknowledges) in earthly proportions. 
 
 Our globe consists, speaking generally, of two opposite 
 classes of ingredients, namely, metals and non-metallic 
 bodies, some of which, as oxygen in the one division, and 
 
 of the Natural History of Creation, Fifth Edition, p. 42. 
 
8 2 Religio- Chemki. 
 
 the precious metals in the other, occur free, but the greater 
 number in combination with some body or bodies of the 
 unlike class. There are many more kinds of metals than of 
 non-metallic substances, but the latter, taken as a whole, 
 occur in much larger quantities than the former. One 
 non-metallic body alone, oxygen, is computed to form a 
 third of the weight of the crust of the earth. In meteoric 
 stones, on the other hand, whilst non-metallic elements are 
 the less numerous constituents (only a half of those occur- 
 ring in the earth being found in them), they also occur in 
 much smaller quantities than the metals. Of some of them, 
 indeed, traces only are found. 
 
 Many of the best-marked aerolites are masses of nearly 
 pure metal, chiefly iron, with a small proportion of nickel. 
 Others contain cobalt, manganese, chromium, copper, and 
 other metals, diffused through them in minute quantities, 
 associated with a small percentage of oxygen, sulphur, chlo- 
 rine, etc. The stony meteorites consist chiefly of silica and 
 metallic oxides. 
 
 Whilst thus, meteoric stones contain only a portion of 
 the elements of the earth, that portion is made up (in the 
 greater number of meteorites), so far as the relative quanti- 
 ties of its components are concerned, almost entirely of 
 metals. A meteoric stone represents, therefore, only a 
 third of the whole constituents of the earth so far as number 
 is concerned, and except to a small extent, but one class of 
 them so far as nature. A globe so constituted could never, by 
 any process of development (unless its so-called elements 
 suffered transmutation), become possessed of water, or an 
 atmosphere, or give birth to terrestrial plants or animals. 
 
 It may make the matter clearer to those not minutely 
 conversant with chemistry, who may suspect us of hyper- 
 criticism, if we illustrate the force of our argument thus. 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 83 
 
 The conclusion in which we are asked to acquiesce is this 
 strange one, that an aggregate of nineteen, or at the utmost 
 twenty-one ingredients, is the same thing as an aggregate 
 of sixty. 1 According to this view, a double flageolet of 
 two tubes should be the same thing as a pan-pipe of seven, 
 or an organ with scores of them ; and a village fife and 
 drum should be identical with a full military band, because 
 the latter includes a fife and drum. It should thus make 
 no difference whether one inherited an iceberg or a green 
 island, Tierra del Fuego or the gold district in California ; 
 for the iceberg possesses to the extent of its possession (namely, 
 so much ice or solid water) what the fertile island contains, 
 and Tierra del Fuego is rich, to the extent of its riches, in 
 the wealth of California. 
 
 Perhaps, however, we are dealing in a misleading exag- 
 geration. The ingredients missing from the meteor-planets 
 may be properly enough marked by the minute analyst as 
 absent, and yet be of no great consequence in reference to 
 the suitableness of the latter to become theatres of life. 
 The difference between the meteorite and the earth is per- 
 haps only such as existed between Paganini's fiddle with 
 one string, and Thalberg's piano with some hundred, from 
 both of which instruments the same melody might sound. 
 If such be the case, the author of the Vestiges could have 
 no objection to allow us to place him within the receiver 
 of an air-pump, and deprive him of only one of the sixty 
 ingredients namely, oxygen which is absent from many 
 of the meteoric stones. Only twenty-one elements, it 
 should seem, are needed, and we have been kinder to him 
 
 1 Twenty-one is the aggregate number of chemical elements found in meteoric 
 stones, but no one meteorite contains so many. Some of the best known consist 
 almost entirely of one ingredient. We state the case, therefore, in the way most 
 disadvantageous for our argument when we speak of the meteoric elements as 
 twenty-one in number. 
 
84 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 than he is on paper to himself, for we have allowed him 
 fifty-nine. Why does he pant so ? and gasp for breath ? 
 Oxygen, it should seem, is no needless superfluity or 
 choice luxury. The lung was not 'made to breathe with- 
 out the breath of life being provided for it ; and a meteoric 
 stone, as our author, before being let out of our receiver, 
 shall confess, would be as fatal as a vacuum to every ter- 
 restrial creature. Let it be further noticed that the missing 
 elements of the meteoric stone are exactly those which 
 are most abundant in plants and animals, and the worth of 
 our author's reasoning will appear ; but to this we shall 
 return. 
 
 The chemical argument stripped of all exaggeration, stands 
 thus. Several specimens of the bodies of space have been 
 subjected to analysis namely, the earth, so far as its crust 
 or accessible portion is concerned, and meteoric stones. 
 The latter have not a common chemical composition, but 
 are divisible into sections, each of which represents a sepa- 
 rate example of planetary chemistry. 1 When the meteorites 
 and the earth are compared, they are found to differ im- 
 mensely, so far as the mode of arrangement, the relative 
 quantities, the number and nature of their constituents are 
 concerned. Here, then, are several unlike chemical spe- 
 cimens of the universe. To which among them are the 
 other heavenly bodies to be compared ? Analysis has suc- 
 ceeded in making one step beyond this earth, and has im- 
 mediately brought to light a non-terrestrial chemistry. If 
 it could stride on to sun, moon, and stars, what should it 
 find ? Different chemistries ? or that of the earth or the 
 meteoric stones endlessly repeated ? Different chemistries, 
 we think, and this for many reasons. 
 
 1 Professor Shepard divides meteorites into two classes Metallic and Stony ; 
 and each class into three orders, under which thirteen sections are included. 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 85 
 
 If the heavenly bodies were constructed of the terrestrial 
 or the meteoric chemical elements, arranged in the way 
 these are in the earth, or in the meteorites, the densities of 
 the heavenly bodies should, within no very wide limits, be 
 identical with the specific gravity of the earth, or of some 
 one of the meteoric stones ; but the opposite is the fact, 
 for the Suri, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, have 
 all a density much below that of our planet, or of any of 
 the meteor-planets, as the following table, where the specific 
 gravity of the earth is s made unity, will show: 1 
 
 Earth, i ; Sun, 0*25 ; Jupiter, 0-24; Uranus, o'jyj 
 Saturn, 0-14; Neptune, 0-23. 
 
 Apart altogether from this difference in density, it is 
 manifest, that confining ourselves to purely chemical con- 
 siderations, we could assign no satisfactory reason for pre- 
 ferring the earth to the meteoric stones, or the latter to the 
 earth, as types of the chemical composition of one or all of 
 the heavenly bodies ; neither can we venture to affirm that 
 we have exhausted in our globe and the meteor-planets the 
 only existing examples of variation in composition which 
 the universe presents, so that every star must be classed 
 with the one or the other, inasmuch as they comprise all 
 the diversities which occur in sidereal chemistry. On the 
 other hand, it is not difficult to show that chemistry amply 
 provides for every star having a different composition, and 
 
 1 In the table in the text we have not given the specific gravity of any of the 
 meteorites, because their densities vary so much, that the mean of their specific 
 gravities does not afford a datum of any value in reference to our argument. 
 For the satisfaction, however, of the reader, we may mention that, according to 
 Humboldt, ' the specific weight of aerolites varies from 1-9 to 4-3. Their general 
 density may be set down as 3, water being i.' Humboldt's maximum is certainly 
 too low, for various of the American meteorites, examined by Professor Shepard, 
 have a density above 7; whilst, therefore, the earth is 5-6 times heavier than 
 water, the densest of the meteorites are 7 times heavier, and the lightest within a 
 tenth of being twice as heavy as water. 
 
8 6 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 renders it exceedingly probable that different stars in this 
 respect differ greatly. 
 
 In the first place, the chemical elements do not present 
 that character of completeness and unity, considered as a 
 great family, which we should expect in the raw material 
 of a whole universe. When we subdivide them into groups, 
 they arrange themselves unequally. Thus in several cases 
 we find divisions of elements, such as chlorine, bromine, 
 iodine ; barium, strontium, calcium ; niobium, pelopium, 
 tantalum, in which the characteristic properties of each of 
 the components of the group pass into those of its other 
 members by the most delicate shadings. In other examples, 
 again, although analogous properties are not wanting in re- 
 lated bodies, the particular substance (e. g., nitrogen or 
 mercury) stands apart, isolated as it were, and exhibiting 
 but remote affinities to its nearest neighbours. In all 
 science, however, and strikingly in chemistry, isolation is 
 the exception, and association the rule. In these cases of 
 apparent isolation, it is possible that elements which would 
 make up a group, and connect the solitary in friendly al- 
 liance with the families about it, may exist in other worlds, 
 as animals supplying gaps in the zoological circles are found 
 extinct in the strata of other eras than our own. Such 
 hypothetically deficient elements no doubt may yet be found 
 in our own globe ; but for the present, we must adopt the 
 rule, c de non apparentibus, et de non existentibus, eadem 
 ratio.' Or we may find all the so-called elements to be 
 modifications of some simpler or simplest forms or form 
 of matter, and be able to convert that into unknown sub- 
 stances of the same grade as our present elements, and so 
 satisfy the supposed need of harmony. Even if we should, 
 however, achieve this result, it would only alter the mode 
 of stating the problem, which would then run thus, What 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 87 
 
 forms of the primary matter are likely to occur in different 
 globes ? 
 
 Secondly^ it may be remarked that some of our terrestrial 
 elements, such as the metals of the earths proper (except 
 aluminum) and also selenium, tellurium, molybden, vana- 
 dium, tungsten, as well as others, are not known to be of 
 service in our globe. It would be very rash to permit our 
 ignorance to be the measure of a question like this. These 
 bodies may have been, or may yet be, even if they are not 
 at present (which, however, is only an assumption), of the 
 utmost value in effecting necessary changes on the earth. 
 Man, too, as his knowledge extends, may discover econo- 
 mical applications of the elements in question of the great- 
 est importance. Withal, however, we may suppose that 
 some, at least, of these substances may not have been 
 specially destined to be of use on our globe, but may 
 bear the same relation to it that rudimentary organs do to 
 the bodies of the animals possessing them, so that they are 
 of little or no service to the structure in which they occur, 
 but are typical of much more highly developed instruments, 
 or arrangements, in other organisms or spheres. These 
 seemingly useless, and sparingly distributed bodies in our 
 earth, may be the prevailing or most important constituents 
 of other globes, and may perform functions there of which 
 we have no conception. Other elements, such as arsenic, 
 yield compounds so deadly to vegetable and animal life, and 
 so apparently unserviceable in the mineral kingdom, that 
 one is almost driven to believe that it was not primarily for 
 us, but for some other beings in a different world, such 
 bodies were provided. At least, we suppose there are few 
 who will consider the slight service which arsenical pre- 
 parations have rendered to medicine, or their efficacy in 
 poisoning rats and flies, and the fact of their furnishing 
 
8 8 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 certain pigments, as an equivalent for the multitude of 
 human beings whom they have consigned to untimely 
 graves, and the many crimes to which they have furnished 
 temptations. 
 
 Thirdly^ nature has been very niggard to us of certain of 
 the elements, for example, of one peculiar and very valu- 
 able class, the noble or precious metals, gold, platina, palla- 
 dium, rhodium, etc. We do not refer to the scarcity of 
 these as limiting our luxury, or count them precious in the 
 sense of being costly. Gold and platina, to mention no 
 others, have the desirable properties of never wasting, rust- 
 ing, or corroding, and platina will not melt in the heat of a 
 blast-furnace. Were these or the allied metals more abun- 
 dant, our eating, drinking, and cooking vessels would be made 
 of one or other of them. Our steam-boilers, railroads, fur- 
 nace-bars, lamp-posts, and the like, would be constructed 
 of platina, rhodium, or palladium, and our lighter and more 
 elegant instruments and utensils of gold, which would be 
 too cheap to tempt thieves to steal. One may suppose that 
 other worlds may have been more richly favoured than we 
 are with supplies of these or other goodly bodies, which 
 find so limited scope for exhibiting their manifold virtues 
 here. Can platina, e.g.^ considered as a veritable, simple 
 substance, be supposed to have been created solely to sup- 
 ply the terrestrial chemist with tests and crucibles ? The 
 chemist will probably think that a very satisfactory final 
 cause for its creation, and we will not cry nay to it. But 
 what if there be worlds where this metal is so abundant 
 that they are sick of the sight of it, and would be glad to 
 see a piece of rusty old iron, where the thieves steal the 
 costly magnesia, and the royal crowns are made of the pre- 
 cious metal, lead ? To speak more soberly, is it very un- 
 likely that so marked and striking a metal as platina, as well 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 89 
 
 as its congeners, may occur more abundantly in other 
 worlds framed on a different ideal from ours ? We have 
 no wish, however, to try our hand at improving God's fair 
 and beautiful world. 
 
 To sum up the matter, we observe, without insisting on 
 more, that we have no ground for assuming that we see on 
 this earth all the kinds of elementary, or quasi-elementary 
 matter which can exist. Still less are we justified in affirm- 
 ing that we have manifested on this globe the only modes of 
 arrangement or of distribution, so far as relative quantity is 
 concerned, of which our elements are susceptible. The 
 very opposite is likely to be the case. The fact of there 
 being many chemical elements awakens the suspicion that 
 they were intended to be arranged in many ways. Had our 
 globe been a ball of iron, or of lead, we should have had 
 nothing to suspect in space but iron or lead. But when 
 there are more than sixty earthly constituents, arranged, 
 too, in a quite arbitrary way, we cannot resist the expecta- 
 tion that they will be found apportioned among the celestial 
 spheres, not in that one way, but in various ways : here a 
 few, there many together ; in one globe, bodies of one 
 class ; in another, of another ; in no one, perhaps, exactly 
 the arrangement that prevails in any of the rest. Our 
 globe may be called a mosaic of some sixty pieces, but it 
 has not pleased the Great Artist to make equal use of each 
 of the sixty. Not more than a half of them can be detected 
 except by minute inspection, and the predominating tints 
 are only some six or seven. Other stars may be mosaics 
 constructed out of more or fewer of the same pieces, but 
 they are, in all probability, put together according to differ- 
 ent patterns. Let it not be forgotten that the omission of 
 a single element would make a great difference. A globe 
 in all other respects identical with ours would be utterly 
 
90 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 unfitted for being the theatre of life such as we see, if it 
 wanted, as we have already noticed, but the one body 
 oxygen, or hydrogen, or nitrogen, or carbon. The addi- 
 tion in considerable quantity of a single new potent element 
 would equally derange the economy of a world. The 
 arrangement in a different way, without addition or abstrac- 
 tion, of existing elements, would be as efficacious a cause of 
 disturbance. If, for example, the nitrogen and oxygen of 
 our atmosphere were suddenly to combine (and every thun- 
 derstorm occasions combination), we might be maddened 
 by laughing-gas, or drowned in an ocean of nitric acid. 
 The shades of variation in such a case would become 
 shadows of most portentous depth and darkness. 
 
 If any one, indeed, will consider how many tunes can be 
 made with the seven primary notes of music ; how many 
 numbers can be combined out of the ten numerals ; how 
 many words out of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, 
 he may conceive how enormously great is the number of 
 worlds, each quite distinct, which could be constructed out 
 of the sixty elements. In the first place, there is a means 
 of variety in the number of the simple bodies. One globe, 
 like our earth, contains them all. Others, like the meteoric 
 stones, may contain only some of them. Secondly, the 
 relative quantities of the elements may vary. On one globe, 
 the abounding element may be oxygen, as in our earth ; in 
 another platina. A third cause of variety will be the con- 
 dition of the elements. With us, hundreds of tons of chlo- 
 rine are locked up in mountains of rock salt. In other 
 worlds, that gas may be free, and form an atmosphere like 
 our air. 
 
 Add these modes of varying composition together, and 
 employ them all, and where will the variety stop ? Millions 
 of millions of worlds would not exhaust it. To what ex- 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 91 
 
 tent this susceptibility of variation has been taken advan- 
 tage of by the Architect of the Heavens we cannot tell ; 
 but to suppose that it has been turned to no account seems 
 a conception meagre beyond endurance. If we but knew 
 the use to which the spheres are put, we might possibly 
 hazard a conjecture concerning their composition, but of 
 that we are altogether ignorant. Yet to suppose that the 
 Infinite One has exhausted the counsels of his wisdom in 
 arranging the chemistry of our globe, and could only there- 
 fore repeat that endlessly through space, or to affirm that 
 such a monotonous arrangement of the great world or uni- 
 verse is in keeping with the endless diversity visible in the 
 little one which we inhabit, is a view of things that may not 
 be entertained for a moment. 
 
 We close this long chemical discussion with one remark. 
 Speculation set aside, the testimony of chemistry in refer- 
 ence to the heavenly bodies is neither more nor less than 
 this, that every one of them which has been submitted to 
 analysis, differs in composition from all the rest. Absolute 
 chemical identity of any two or more has never been ob- 
 served, whilst the extremes of difference between those 
 least like each other, if denoted on a scale, would be 60 
 and i ; the maximum of this scale being the earth with its 
 sixty ingredients, the minimum, those well-known mete- 
 orites, which are little else than lumps of malleable iron. 
 The importance of this fact has been overlooked, because, 
 beginning with the earth, we have found the meteor-planets 
 composed of fewer ingredients than it, and these all ter- 
 restrial. 
 
 Assuredly it would have been a more remarkable circum- 
 stance, if the meteoric elements had all been novel, and 
 possessed of striking and unfamiliar properties ; and some- 
 thing like disappointment has been felt because they are not. 
 
92 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 But we must not, on this account, disregard the fact that 
 the meteorites are non-telluric in their chemical characters. 
 They are so, as much by the terrestrial elements they want, 
 as they would have been by the novel elements they might 
 have possessed. Had a single non-terrestrial element been 
 found in a meteoric stone, our philosophers would have 
 been lost in wonder. Yet, within the last ten years, six 
 or seven new elements, namely, Didymium, Lanthanum, 
 Niobium, Pelopium, Tantalum, Erbium, Terbium, have 
 been discovered in our own planet, and none but professed 
 chemists have paid any attention to the fact, nor has the 
 discovery perceptibly altered any of our scientific beliefs. 
 Had but one of those obscure metals been found in a mete- 
 orite, and in it alone, speculations would have abounded 
 on its nature and uses. Nevertheless, the addition of six 
 or seven such metals to our globe, by the tacit confession of 
 all science, is of infinitely less importance to the earth, than 
 the loss of one such element as oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, 
 or carbon would be. To find, therefore, one of the latter 
 absent, is truly a more interesting fact in relation to ter- 
 restrial chemistry, than it would be to find all of the re- 
 cently discovered metals, or as many more similar elements, 
 present. The most richly endowed of the meteoric stones, 
 moreover, contain not a majority, but less than a fourth of 
 the terrestrial elements, and of many of the most character- 
 istically terrestrial elements, only traces. As soon as this 
 fact is distinctly perceived, men will cease to complain that 
 there are no new meteoric elements, and none will refuse 
 to acknowledge that, so far as analysis has proceeded, ter- 
 restrial and sidereal chemistry are quite different. 
 
 It remains now only to consider what the judgment of 
 Physiology or Biology is likely to be concerning the mani- 
 festation of life in the heavenly bodies. It has, to a con- 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 93 
 
 siderable extent, been anticipated or implied in what has 
 been stated already. 
 
 Life, as it exists on this globe, is compatible only with 
 certain conditions, which may not be overstepped without 
 causing its annihilation. The whole of these need not be 
 enumerated, as the failure of one is as fatal to existence as 
 the absence of all. The three to which Sir John Herschel 
 has referred namely, difference in the quantity of heat and 
 light reaching each globe ; variation in the intensity of 
 gravity at its surface j a"nd in the quality of its component 
 materials may suffice to illustrate this. Light and heat are 
 essential to the development and maintenance of earthly 
 life, but their excess is as destructive to it as their defi- 
 ciency. What, then, shall we say of the sun, whose heat 
 we know by direct trial to be of such intensity, that after 
 great degradation or reduction, it can still melt the most in 
 fusible minerals, and dissipate every metal in vapour j and 
 whose light is so intolerably brilliant, 4 that the most vivid 
 flames disappear, and the most intensely ignited solids 
 appear only as black spots on the disc of the sun, when 
 held between it and the eye ?' If the temperature of the 
 solid sphere or body of the sun be such as those phenomena 
 imply, it must be the abode, if inhabited at all, of beings 
 such as Sir Thomas Browne refers to, who can 'lie im- 
 mortal in the arms of fire.' It is within possibility, how- 
 ever, that the body of the sun is black as midnight and 
 cold as death, so that as the eye sees all things but itself, 
 he illuminates every sphere but his own, and is light to 
 other stars, but darkness to his own gaze. Or the light 
 and heat of his blazing envelope may be so tempered by 
 the reflective clouds of his atmosphere, which throw them 
 off into space, that an endless summer, a nightless summer- 
 day, reigns on his globe. Such an unbroken summer, how- 
 
94 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 ever, though pleasant to dream of, would be no boon to 
 terrestrial creatures, to whom night is as essential as day, 
 and darkness and rest as light and action. The probabilities 
 are all in favour of the temperature of the sun's solid sphere 
 being very high, nor will any reasonable hypothesis justify 
 the belief that the economy of his system in relation to the 
 distribution of light and heat can resemble ours. 
 
 We can assert this still more distinctly of the planets. 
 We should be blinded with the glare and burnt up if trans- 
 ported to Mercury, where the sun acts as if seven times 
 hotter than on this earth ; and we should shiver in the dark, 
 and be frozen to death if removed to Uranus, where the 
 sun is three hundred times colder than he is felt to be by 
 us. To pass from Uranus to Mercury would be to undergo, 
 in the latter/ exposure to a temperature some two thousand 
 times higher than we had experienced in the former, whilst 
 on this earth the range of existence lies within some two 
 hundred degrees of the Fahrenheit thermometer. 
 
 As for our satellite, Sir John Herschel says of it, ' The 
 climate of the moon must be very extraordinary : the alter- 
 nation being that of unmitigated and burning sunshine, 
 fiercer than an equatorial noon, continued for a whole 
 fortnight, and the keenest severity of frost, far exceeding 
 that of our polar winters, for an equal time.' It would 
 seem, then, that though all else were equal, the variations 
 in amount of light and heat would alone necessitate the 
 manifestation of a non-terrestrial life upon the sun, and the 
 spheres which accompany the earth in its revolutions around 
 it. All else, however, is not equal. The intensity of 
 gravity at the surfaces of the different heavenly bodies 
 differs enormously. At the sun it is nearly twenty-eight 
 times greater than at the earth. c The efficacy of mus- 
 cular power to overcome weight is therefore proportionably 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 95 
 
 nearly twenty-eight times less on the sun than on the earth. 
 An ordinary man, for example, would not only be unable 
 to sustain his own weight on the sun, but would literally 
 be crushed to atoms under the load.' ' Again, the intensity 
 of gravity, or its efficacy in counteracting muscular power, 
 and pressing animal activity, on Jupiter is nearly two and a 
 half times that on the earth, on Mars is not more than one- 
 half, on the moon one-sixth, and on the smaller planets 
 probably not more than one-twentieth ; giving a scale of 
 which the extremes are in the proportion of sixty to one.' 
 
 From this account, it appears that we should be literally 
 mercurial [in Mercury, saturnine in Saturn, and anything 
 but jovial in Jupiter, where we should be two and a half 
 times heavier and duller than here. On the smaller planets 
 we should feel like swimmers in the Dead Sea, or as if in a 
 bath of quicksilver, where to sink is impossible. c A man 
 placed on one of them would spring with ease sixty feet 
 high, and sustain no greater shock in his descent than he 
 does on the earth from leaping a yard. On such planets 
 giants might exist, and those enormous animals which on 
 earth require the buoyant power of water to counteract 
 their weight, might there be denizens of the land.' If the 
 fixed stars be suns, of what ponderous adamant must the 
 beings be fashioned which exist on their surfaces ! Were 
 it possible for us, clothed in some frigorific asbestos gar- 
 ment, to endure unscathed the flames of Sirius, it would 
 only be to be crushed to powder against his enormous globe. 
 Here, then, is a second point of diversity, of itself sufficient 
 to forbid the development of the earth-life we see here on 
 almost any other of the heavenly bodies. 
 
 And we do not require to enlarge upon the third point of 
 diversity variation in the chemical composition of the 
 spheres. The absence of an atmosphere from the Moon, 
 
9 6 Keligio- Chemici. 
 
 and the peculiar characters of that of Jupiter and of the Sun, 
 have already been referred to as forbidding the appearance of 
 terrestrial life under their skies. The impossibility of its 
 manifestation on meteor-planets such as have reached our 
 earth has also been sufficiently dwelt upon. 
 
 In the face of the immense diversity which has thus been 
 shown to prevail through space, it should seem impossible 
 to hold the belief that the stars are all but so many Earths. 
 The author of the Vestiges^ however, in his blind zeal for 
 the nebular hypothesis of a common physical origin of all 
 worlds, and solicitous to save God the trouble of taking care 
 of his own universe, thinks otherwise. 
 
 ' We see,' says he, speaking as if the nebular hypothesis 
 were an established fact, c that matter has originally been 
 diffused in one mass, of which the spheres are portions. 
 Consequently, Inorganic matter must be presumed to be every- 
 where the same^ although probably with differences in the 
 proportions of ingredients in different globes, and also some 
 difference of conditions. Out of a certain number of the 
 elements of inorganic matter are composed the elements of 
 organic bodies, both vegetable and animal ; such must be the 
 rule in Jupiter and in Sirius as it is here. We are, there- 
 fore, all but certain that herbaceous and ligneous fibre, that 
 flesh and blood, are the constituents of the organic beings 
 of all those spheres which are as yet seats of life.' 1 
 
 He proceeds a little further on to say, c Where there is 
 light, there will be eyes ; and these, in other spheres, will 
 be the same in all respects as the eyes of tellurian animals, 
 with only such differences as may be necessary to accord 
 with minor peculiarities of condition and of situation. It is,' 
 he adds, c but a small stretch of the argument to suppose 
 that one conspicuous organ of a large portion of our animal 
 
 1 Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, p. 171. 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 97 
 
 kingdom being thus universal, a parity in all the other 
 organs, species for species, class for class, kingdom for 
 kingdom, is highly likely, and that thus the inhabitants of 
 all the other globes of space have not only a general but a 
 particular resemblance to those of our own.' l How base- 
 less this reasoning is, with its c small stretch ' at the close, 
 we need not stop to demonstrate anew, but a few words 
 may be added, in reference to the concluding argument con- 
 cerning the relation of eyes to'light. 
 
 It is a hasty and unwarrantable conclusion that every illu- 
 minated globe must contain living eyes. On our own earth 
 there are many animals without organs of vision ; so that we 
 cannot conclude that eyes are a necessary reaction of light 
 and life upon each other. Worlds may be supplied with 
 light for other reasons than to endow their inhabitants with 
 the faculty of sight. Our sun is a centre of many influ- 
 ences. We know at least three which may be separated 
 from each other light, heat, and what has been called ac- 
 tinic or chemical force ; but probably electricity and mag- 
 netism also emanate from his orb. Terrestrial plants and 
 animals are powerfully affected by most, probably by all of 
 those ; but the inhabitants of other spheres may not have 
 organs enabling them to take advantage of more than some, 
 perhaps only of one of the forces in question. On the 
 other hand, the sun may be the source of 'agencies of which 
 we know nothing, which are about us and yet do not affect 
 us, because we have no channels or senses by which they 
 can find access to us. The dwellers in other planets may 
 have organs of which we have no conception, enabling 
 them to enjoy these either as substitutes for the influences 
 which affect us, or in addition to them. 
 
 Our sun, it is true, sends light to his several planets and 
 
 1 Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, p. 172. 
 G 
 
9 8 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 their moons, but that they all make the same use of it is in 
 no degree probable. They may, some of them at least, be 
 c old in rayless blindness,' yet not like Schiller's Proserpine, 
 ' aching for the gold-bright light in vain.' They may have 
 * knowledge at one entrance quite shut out ; ' but so likely 
 enough have we, and at more entrances, perhaps, than one. 
 The sun may impartially distribute the same gifts, though 
 in unequal quantities, to his family ; but it depends on each 
 member of the circle what improvement is made of them. 
 Mercury, who receives Benjamin's portion, may well be 
 expected to show a different result from the newly-dis- 
 covered, scantily-endowed Neptune, who has so long and 
 so mysteriously tempted Uranus from his course. We 
 would liken the different planets and satellites of our system 
 to so many pieces of stained glass in a cathedral window ; 
 on every one, the same seven-tinted light falls, but the 
 chemical composition, and molecular arrangement of each 
 transparent sheet determines whether it turns to account the 
 whole seven and gleams white, or profits only by certain of 
 them, and shows, in consequence, green or red, blue, purple, 
 or yellow. If some tiny fly, whose dominion was limited 
 to the inside of a single pane, should suppose that, as its 
 kingdom was bathed in unchanging red, every other sheet of 
 glass must be ' vermeil tinctured ' also, because it knew 
 that on every one the same light fell, it would greatly err, 
 as we are wise enough to know. But we who are c crushed 
 before the moth,' probably err as widely, if we affirm that 
 each of the planets is a mirror reflecting the sun in the same 
 way. He is probably like a fountain, sending forth a river 
 charged with many dissimilar substances, and each of the 
 planets resembles a filter, separating from the stream what 
 its construction enables it to retain, and what was intended 
 and is fitted to be appropriated by it. 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 99 
 
 Even, however, if we should concede to our author that 
 wherever there is light there will be eyes, surely a few 
 more data are necessary, before a whole animal can be 
 assumed. Can we infer that lungs or other breathing- 
 organs exist, unless we make it probable that there is an 
 atmosphere to breathe ? Can we take for granted wings or 
 birds or of insects, unless we show that there is air to fan ? 
 or, may we count on the ' hearing ear ' before we establish 
 that there is a gaseous or aqueous medium to transmit the 
 undulations of sound ? If there be no water, will there be 
 paddles of whales or of turtles, or fins of fishes ? If no 
 carbon, will there be leaf or stem of flower or tree ? If no 
 lime, bone or skeleton of any animal ? The existence of 
 all these organs cannot be assumed merely because there is 
 light. But, in truth, as little can organs of vision. For if 
 there be no water, there can be no blood ; and if no blood, 
 then not even eyes, at least earthly eyes, however constant 
 and brilliant the light may be. 
 
 The unequivocal testimony, then, of physical science, as 
 it seems to us, is against the doctrine that life, as it appears 
 on the stars, must be terrestrial in its nature, though we are 
 far from wishing to affirm that planets closely resembling 
 the earth may not occur in space. It is enough for our 
 argument to show that there are myriads of stars, which, 
 for the reasons already given, are altogether non-terrestrial 
 in their characters. 
 
 It remains, then, to inquire, whether we are to come to 
 the conclusion, that the stars are uninhabited, inasmuch as 
 terrestrial life is the only possible one, or to believe that 
 there exists a diversified astral life which is manifested on 
 them. Abstaining from anything like an attempt to define 
 positively the probable characteristics of the latter, if it 
 exists, we may say this much on the matter. There are 
 
i oo R eligio- Chemici. 
 
 fewer characters of universality in terrestrial life than in 
 terrestrial chemistry. There is a plant life and an animal 
 life, which are quite separable, and may exist apart, and 
 there are different kinds of each. To mention but one 
 example : the egg of the butterfly has one life, and the 
 caterpillar which springs from it has another ; and the 
 chrysalis into which the caterpillar changes has a third, and 
 the butterfly which rises from the chrysalis has a fourth ; 
 and so there may be worlds which know only a germinal, 
 or a caterpillar, a chrysalis, or a butterfly life. 
 
 P'urther, in this world we see plants and the lowest 
 animals possessing only the sense of touch, if the former 
 can be said to be endowed even with that. Gradually as 
 we ascend in the animal scale, additional senses are mani- 
 fested, till four more appear in the highest animals. But 
 who shall tell us that these five are the only possible, or 
 even the only existing channels of communication with the 
 outer world ? We might, besides the general argument 
 from analogy against such a conception, refer to those 
 agencies influencing living beings, which have been recog- 
 nised for centuries as implying some supersensuous relation 
 to external nature. It would be unwise to allow the extra- 
 vagances of animal magnetism to prevent us from recog- 
 nising the indications which several of its phenomena afford, 
 of perceptions of outward things not easily referable to the 
 .operation of any of the known senses. Nevertheless, that 
 so-called, and as yet questionable science, has, for a season 
 at least, fallen into the hands of those with whom the 
 gratification of wonder is a much greater object than the 
 discovery of truth, and we fear to build much upon it. We 
 can find, in another and quite unexceptionable quarter, a 
 substantial foundation on which to assert the probability of 
 life being manifested very differently in other spheres than 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 101 
 
 it is in our own globe. We refer to the assurance which 
 the New Testament gives us, that our human spirits are 
 destined to occupy bodies altogether unlike our present 
 ones. 
 
 From the remarkable way in which the Apostle Paul 
 likens the c natural body' to a seed which is to be sown, 
 and grow up a ' spiritual body,' one is led to believe that the 
 immortal future tabernacle is to bear the same relation of 
 difference, and yet of derivation to the present mortal one, 
 which a tree does to a seed. The one will be as unlike the 
 other as the oak is unlike the acorn, though but in a sense 
 the expansion of it. 
 
 Whether this be the doctrine or not which the Apostle 
 teaches, it is at least certain, that he announces that a great 
 and inconceivable alteration is to come over our bodies. 
 Doubtless, our spirits are to be changed also, but more, as 
 it seems, in the way of intensification of faculties, desires, 
 passions, and affections on the one hand, good, on the 
 other, evil which have been exercised or experienced, in 
 their fainter manifestations, in the present state of existence, 
 than by the introduction of positively new elements into our 
 intellectual and moral being. We do not urge this point ; 
 it is enough if it be acknowledged to be a Scripture doc- 
 trine, that human spirits, reminiscent of their past history, 
 and conscious of their identity, are, however otherwise 
 changed, to occupy bodies totally unlike our present ones. 
 If, however, it be supposed that the 'spiritual' occupants 
 of our future tabernacles are to differ totally from us, it 
 only adds to the force of the argument, as it implies the 
 greater diversity as to the manner in which being may 
 manifest itself. It is part, then, of the scheme of God's 
 universe, that spirits clothed in non-earthly bodies shall 
 dwell in it. It is idle, therefore, to say that terrestrial life 
 
i o 2 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 is certainly the probable sidereal one, since it is not the 
 only existing, or at least the only contemplated mode of 
 being. In looking at the stars as habitations of living 
 creatures, we have at least two unlike examples of the way 
 in which mind and matter admit of association to choose 
 from, as patterns of what astral life may be. But the fur- 
 ther lesson is surely taught us, that there may exist other 
 manifestations of life than only these two. For the spell of 
 simplicity once broken by a single variation, we know not 
 how many more to expect, whilst the conclusion is not to 
 be resisted, that other variations there will be. The same 
 Apostle who dwells on the resurrection, tells us, in refer- 
 ence to the happy dead, that ' eye hath not seen, nor ear 
 heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the 
 things which God hath prepared for them that love him.' 
 They are not only, therefore, to have bodily organs different 
 from ours, but these are to be gratified by sights which our 
 eyes have not witnessed, by sounds to which our ears have 
 never listened, and by a perception of phenomena incon- 
 ceivable by us. There are here indicated the two great 
 elements of variety to which we have already referred ; a 
 theatre of existence totally unlike the present one, and organs 
 of relation to it different from those of terrestrial beings. 
 
 The argument might be greatly extended, but we cannot 
 attempt here an exhaustive discussion of the subject. The 
 sum of the whole inquiry is this : Astronomy declares that 
 there are unlike theatres of existence in the heavens, suns, 
 moons, arid planets ; Chemistry demonstrates that different 
 kinds of construction, that of the earth, and those of the 
 meteoric stones, prevail through space ; Physiology con- 
 templates the possibility of a non-terrestrial life unfolding 
 itself in the stars ; and the Bible reveals to us, that there 
 is an immortal heavenly, as well as a mortal earthly life. 
 
The Chemistry of the Stars. 103 
 
 The consideration of all this leaves no place for the 
 thought, that the tide of life which ebbs and flows through 
 the universe is but the undulation of so many streamlets 
 identical with that which bathes the shores of our globe. 
 In our Father's house are many mansions, and the Great 
 Shepherd watches over countless flocks, and has other 
 sheep which are not of this fold. 
 
CHEMICAL FINAL CAUSES, 
 
 AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE PRESENCE OF PHOSPHORUS, 
 
 NITROGEN, AND IRON IN THE HIGHER 
 
 SENTIENT ORGANISMS. 
 
 THE recent unexampled progress of anatomy, chemistry, 
 and physiology, has brought into startling prominence a 
 problem which may be stated thus, ' Why do certain 
 chemical elements or ingredients, rather than others, enter 
 into the composition of plants and animals ?' This ques- 
 tion has probably been put to himself more or less clearly 
 by every considerate student of the sciences named above, 
 and has unconsciously guided researches which did not 
 professedly deal with it. There is not one, moreover, of 
 our great physiologists and chemists who has not long medi- 
 tated on this problem, and largely contributed to its solu- 
 tion, but their replies, in the majority of cases, have been 
 indirect and implicit ; sometimes indeed instinctive rather 
 than intentional ; and those whom they have addressed have 
 often failed to perceive that a question had been proposed, 
 and an answer to it given. A very few have distinctly con- 
 sidered the problem, among whom a foremost place must 
 be assigned to the learned Lehmann, 1 in whose writings 
 such phrases as c the physiological value' of an element 
 
 1 Physiological Chemistry, by Professor G. C. Lehmann. Vol. i. Translated for 
 the Cavendish Society by Professor G. . Day, St. Andrews. Methodological 
 Introduction, pp. TO, 25. 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 105 
 
 continually occur, and who is induced only by a sense of 
 the complexity of the inquiry, and the hopelessness in the 
 present state of our knowledge of disposing of its difficulties, 
 to adjourn its discussion for a season. 1 As for the great 
 majority, again, of educated, intelligent, medical men, and 
 others conversant with chemistry and physiology, if such 
 queries are addressed to them as, ' Why do our skeletons 
 consist of bone rather than of wood, or flint, or marble ? 
 Why are our teeth composed' of ivory rather than of steel ? 
 Why is our blood charged with iron rather than with gold ?' 
 they are simply startled and make no reply. And truly 
 no reply but a most imperfect one is or ever will be pos- 
 sible ; nor is it otherwise than with the utmost diffidence, 
 that I attempt to suggest why only certain of the elements 
 occur in living organisms. The question, however, is 
 certainly one worth attempting to answer, because its con- 
 sideration cannot but lead us to ennobling meditations of 
 God, one of whose glories it is l to conceal a thing ;' whilst, 
 to the extent that we can answer it, we shall enlarge the 
 domain alike of the science of biology and of the art of 
 medicine. For no one will doubt that science would gain 
 by the disposal of the problem before us ; and it is scarcely 
 less evident that if we knew one reason, still more each of 
 the reasons, why even one element, not to say all the organ- 
 ismal elements are present in our bodies, we should be 
 better able, by the amount of that knowledge, to preserve 
 health and to cure disease. 
 
 The problem thus awaiting a fruitful solution is as 
 follows. Our globe, including the atmosphere, and the 
 ocean with its tributary waters, consists in very unequal 
 proportion of some sixty substances, which, according to 
 our present knowledge, are simple or elementary. Of these 
 
 1 Of. cit. pp. 440, 443. 
 
1 06 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 sixty chemical elements, less than a third are found dis- 
 tributed throughout the entire vegetable and animal king- 
 doms. Of this fractional third, one-half occur only in 
 small quantity, so that the greater part of the bulk and 
 weight of plants and animals is made up of one-fifth or one- 
 sixth of the whole elements ; and the greatest part consists 
 of but three, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. This will 
 appear from the accompanying table, in which the chemical 
 elements occurring in plants and animals are distinguished 
 from those known to be absent from their tissues, or not 
 yet recognised as present. The ever-present elements of 
 plants and animals I have distinguished as organismal^ rather 
 than as organic ; because on the one hand, the whole of the 
 elements found in living structures are also found in inor- 
 ganic masses ; and on the other hand, many organic sub- 
 stances (according to the chemist's definition of such), as 
 kakodyle, stibio-methyle, and zinc-ethyle, contain respec- 
 tively arsenic, antimony, and zinc, which are not normal 
 constituents of plants or animals, and unless in the smallest 
 quantities, are deadly to all of them. 
 
 ORGANISM AL ELEMENTS. NON-ORGANISMAL ELEMENTS. 
 
 Non-Met ah. 
 
 1. Oxygen. 
 
 2. Hydrogen. 
 
 3. Nitrogen. 
 
 4. Carbon. 
 
 5. Sulphur. 
 
 6. Phosphorus. 
 
 7. Silicon. 
 
 8. Chlorine. 
 
 9. Bromine. 
 
 10. Iodine. 
 
 1 1 . Fluorine. 
 
 1. Selenium ? 
 
 2. Boron ? 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 
 
 107 
 
 ORGAMSMAL ELEMENTS. 
 
 12. Potassium. 
 
 13. Sodium. 
 14.. Calcium. 
 
 15. Magnesium. 
 
 16. Iron. 
 
 1 7. Manganese. 
 
 NON-ORGANISMAL ELEMENTS. 
 
 Met ah. 
 
 3. Aluminum. 
 
 24. Niobium. 
 
 4. Antimony. 
 
 25. Osmium. 
 
 5. Arsenic ? 
 
 26. Palladium. 
 
 6. Barium. 
 
 27. Pelopium. 
 
 7. Bismuth. 
 
 28. Platinum. 
 
 8. Cadmium. 
 
 29. Rhodium. 
 
 9. Cerium. 
 
 30. Ruthenium. 
 
 10. Chromium. 
 
 31. Silver. 
 
 ii. Cobalt. 
 
 32. Strontium. 
 
 12. Copper ? 
 
 33. Tantalum. 
 
 13. Didymium. 
 
 34. Tellurium. 
 
 14. Erbium. 
 
 35. Terbium. 
 
 15. Gold. 
 
 36. Thorium. 
 
 1 6. Glucinum. 
 
 37. Tin. 
 
 17. Iridium. 
 
 38. Titanium. 
 
 i 8. Lanthanium. 
 
 39. Tungsten. 
 
 19. Lead ? 
 
 40. Uranium. 
 
 20. Lithium. 
 
 41. Vanadium. 
 
 21. Molybdenum. 
 
 42. Yttrium. 
 
 22. Mercury. 
 
 43. Zinc. 
 
 23. Nickel. 
 
 44. Zirconium. 
 
 The elements marked with a (?) are those which have 
 either been occasionally detected in plants and animals, or 
 which there are reasons for thinking would be found if 
 sought for. Claims were at one time largely set up for 
 arsenic and lead, as present in all animals in small quantities, 
 but those claims are now generally disallowed. A similar 
 claim, but on better grounds, has been urged in behalf of 
 copper, which is sometimes present in the human body, 
 
i oS Religio- Chemici. 
 
 and is apparently never absent from some of the Alollusca, 
 Cephalopoda^ Ascidite, and Crustacea}- 
 
 Of the two missing non-metallic elements, Selenium, the 
 analogue of sulphur, may be found accompanying the latter 
 in the sulphur-compounds of the animal organism ; and 
 Boron, the salts of whose oxy-acids resemble those of 
 carbon and silicon, may be associated with the alkaline car- 
 bonates and phosphates. Neither of these elements has 
 as yet been sought for. 
 
 It may seem at first sight, questioning the sufficiency or 
 the Chemist's ' victorious analysis ' to detect every ingre- 
 dient of a complex whole, to hint that he may have missed 
 certain organismal elements because he did not seek for 
 them ; seeing that he professes his ability to resolve an un- 
 known composite substance into each of its ingredients, 
 however numerous they may be, provided only they are all 
 among the recognised sixty (or more) elements. But in 
 reality, the Physiological Chemist has never done more than 
 say, c this is present,' and has always left a margin for those 
 possible elements which had not been objects of search with 
 him. No deliberate, exhaustive inquiry into all the ele- 
 ments of any plant or animal has ever been instituted, and 
 till it shall be, a query may be put in every list of organis- 
 mal elements over-against all the so-called chemical simple 
 substances ; although it is manifest that, in the case of the 
 human organism, we know all the elements which are pre- 
 sent in large quantity in it. At the same time, when we 
 find an organic compound so easily detected as sugar, over- 
 looked, till very recently, in the secretions of the liver ; and 
 so familiar a substance as ammonia, after being positively 
 pronounced, by the most skilful and impartial chemists, to 
 
 1 See, in reference to the three metals in question, Lehmann's P/iys. Chem. 
 vol. i. pp. 449, 450. 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 109 
 
 be totally absent from the blood, demonstrated, to the satis- 
 faction of the most competent judges, to be one of its never 
 failing and most important constituents, we must avoid dog- 
 matizing on what substances may yet prove to be essential 
 ingredients, even of those organisms which have for the 
 longest time been objects of study. And as quantity is no 
 measure of value in the case of an organismal element, we 
 must apply a similar rule to the rarest simple substances. 
 More than five years of research have enabled me to de- 
 monstrate the universal distribution of Fluorine throughout 
 the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, and especially 
 its occurrence in the higher organisms ; and at length, 
 my results have received confirmation by M. Nickles, 1 
 who is about to lay his observations before the French 
 Academy. 
 
 It thus appears, that, as regards the kind or quality of 
 their component matter, living organisms, so far as we 
 know them, consist chiefly of non-metallic matter ; eleven 
 out of the thirteen non-metals (including hydrogen) being 
 found in them, whilst only six of the solidifiable metals 
 have as yet been recognised among their components. If, 
 however, hydrogen is a metal, as there are so many reasons 
 for believing it to be, and if silicon is a metal, and as such 
 better named silicium, then the list of non-metallic bodies 
 
 1 My papers on Fluorine are contained in the Transactions of the Royal 
 Society of Edinburgh for April 6, 1846, and April 19, 1852, and in the Proceed- 
 ings of the same Society for November 1 846 ; likewise in the reports of the 
 British Association for 1846 and 1850, and in the Transactions of the Botanical 
 Society of Edinburgh for 1852. I give these references in detail, because M. 
 Nickles is apparently unacquainted with any of my researches, and has deposited 
 with the French Academy, a preliminary Note on The Presence of Fluorine in the 
 Blood, which, ten years after I had announced the fact, he claims as a discovery 
 which he has just made in November last. (Journal de Pharmacie pour D&embrc 
 1856. Presence du fluor dans le sang, par M. J. Nickles. Communiqut a V Aca- 
 di'mie dcs Sckncts, dans la seance du 3 Noi-embre 1856.) 
 
1 10 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 will be diminished by two, but they will still exceed the 
 metals in number by three. 1 
 
 So far again as quantity of component ingredient is con- 
 cerned, the bulk and weight of all living organisms are most 
 largely made up of non-metallic matter ; charcoal and oxy- 
 gen specially preponderating. 
 
 In relation, thus, both to quality and quantity of consti- 
 tuent elements, plants and animals are mainly aggregations 
 of non-metals ; but this forms no point of distinction be- 
 tween them and a multitude, perhaps the majority, of mine- 
 rals ; 2 nor does it warrant any conclusion as to the metals 
 which do occur in organisms, being less important than their 
 non-metallic elements. 
 
 Living organisms then are not chance-medleys of ele- 
 ments of different kinds ; nor do they consist of equal quan- 
 tities of all the elements ; nor do they contain in greatest 
 quantity the elements which contribute most largely to the 
 weight of the globe. 
 
 It is true that as all plants consist chiefly of charcoal and 
 water, the amount of vegetable matter on the globe could 
 not be large, if carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen were not 
 abundant ; and as the great majority of animals have much 
 lime in their skeletons, their number could not be great, if 
 lime were a scarce substance. But it certainly is not merely 
 because charcoal, water, and lime are plentiful that they 
 occur in living organisms. On the other hand, both plants 
 and animals are found to reject substances which are in 
 abundance about them, and to appropriate others which are 
 scantily provided by nature, and can only be very slowly 
 
 1 The recent interesting discovery by Wijhler and Deville, that boron is crys- 
 tullizable like carbon in its diamond-modification, and does not put on crystalline- 
 metallic characters, lessens the probability of silicon proving to be a metal. 
 
 2 Certainly the majority, if silicon, which, next to oxygen, is the prevailing 
 element in minerals, is not metallic. 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 1 1 1 
 
 accumulated even in favourable circumstances. A land 
 plant, for example, finds in the soil which supports it much 
 of the earth or oxide alumina^ and very little of the alkalies 
 potash and soda ; yet it totally refuses to take any of the 
 alumina, whilst it untiringly searches for and absorbs the 
 alkalies ; or dies if it cannot find them. A graminivorous 
 animal finds in its food much silica, yet, with the exception 
 of a very little in the hair, and mere traces elsewhere, silica 
 is absent from all its structures'. On the other hand, it finds 
 in its food very little phosphate of lime but it appropriates 
 the whole of it, expending it on the nutrition of every tissue, 
 but especially in constructing its bones. 
 
 If we had the means of comparing the weight of an ele- 
 phant's tusk, say of 150 Ibs., with the tons of vegetable 
 matter which the animal had to devour, and the hundred- 
 weights of silica which it had to reject, before it obtained a 
 sufficient amount of phosphate of lime to form the ivory of 
 a single tooth, we should have a startling proof that there is 
 no necessary connexion between the quantity of raw mate- 
 rial offered to an organism, and the quantity of that material 
 appropriated by it. 
 
 The illustration of this truth afforded by the rejection or 
 alumina by plants, and of silica by animals, is the more sig- 
 nificant that it is strikingly at variance with common belief. 
 Silica and alumina together, constitute clay, and although 
 this occurs in no plant or animal of any kind, all plants 
 and animals, and especially man, are held to have been 
 created from it, and to revert to it after death. Not merely 
 the vulgar but also the intelligent have agreed in interpret- 
 ing the sacred declaration that c the Lord God formed man 
 of the dust of the ground,' as signifying that man was made 
 from clay. Theologians have often undesignedly contri- 
 buted to the opinion, by mixing up with this simple decla- 
 
ii2 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 ration of a physical truth the purely metaphorical references 
 of Scripture to c the earthly house of this tabernacle ' and to 
 mankind under God's sovereignty as resembling c Clay in 
 the hands of the potter.' The doctrine, however, does not 
 belong only to Christendom. In many regions of the East, 
 Adam is held to have been a red man, and made of red 
 clay ; nay, a specimen of such loam, brought from a tradi- 
 tional site of the Garden of Eden near the Euphrates, was 
 recently offered in Edinburgh for chemical analysis, to see 
 if it could be identified as Adamic dust ! Shakspere long 
 ago counted upon a universal response when he made Ham- 
 let too curiously consider, how 
 
 * Imperious Cassar dead, and turned to clay, 
 Might stop a hole to keep the wind away ;' 
 
 and our latest and greatest poetess, in her Aurora Leigh, 
 makes her hero Romney exclaim, 
 
 ' Dear Marian, of one clay God made us all, 
 And though men push and poke and paddle in't 
 (As children play at fashioning dirt-pies), 
 And call their fancies by the name of facts, 
 Assuming difference, lordship, privilege, 
 When all's plain dirt, they come back to it at last ; 
 The first grave-digger proves it with a spade, 
 And pats all even.' ' 
 
 The belief is a very natural one, for no dust is more 
 abundant than clay-dust ; and plants live with their roots 
 buried in clay, and on plants all animals, including man, 
 feed directly or indirectly ; yet the belief is without any 
 foundation. Dust we are, and unto dust we shall return, 
 but not into clay. 
 
 The selecting power which thus characterizes the vege- 
 table and animal worlds each as a whole, is not less strik- 
 ingly shown when we compare genera with genera, or 
 
 1 1st Edition, p. 139. 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 1 1 j 
 
 species with species, as to their component ingredients. In 
 every botanic garden one may see plants requiring very dif- 
 ferent kinds of food growing side by side, and living on the 
 same soil. Botanic gardens would be impossible but for 
 this. If we had not only to bring the palm from South 
 America, and the camellia from China, but also to import 
 the very earth in which they grew, our richest gardens 
 would exhibit a very meagre show. We stole the secret 
 of porcelain-making from the, Chinese, but it did us no 
 good till in a few widely-separated places in Europe we dis- 
 covered porcelain-clay. But the camellias, the azaleas, and 
 tea-plants of China take as kindly to British earth as if they 
 had never known any other ; and the palms, if they sigh for 
 brighter skies, and for breezes with warmer breaths, make 
 no complaint against the soil or water of England. Botanic 
 gardens are possible, because, provided their soils contain all 
 the ingredients of plants, each will select for itself exactly 
 what it requires. 
 
 Zoological gardens are possible for a similar reason, and 
 illustrate the same truth. The naturally carnivorous cat 
 may be accustomed to a vegetable diet, and the naturally 
 graminivorous horse or ox to an animal diet, provided in 
 both cases no ingredient essential to life is wanting, for the 
 selecting power resident in each organism will prevent it 
 from injuriously losing or gaining by the change. 
 
 A still more striking example of selective action is 
 afforded by the plants and animals which simultaneously 
 develop themselves from the same medium, such as the 
 sea. In any rocky pool, when the tide is out, and in every 
 thriving drawing-room aquarium, one may find the graceful 
 plants which we call sea-weeds sipping from the mingled 
 waters their daily fractional dose of iodine ; housed sea- 
 snails sucking from it carbonate of lime for their shells ; 
 
 H 
 
114 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 restless fishes extracting from it phosphate of lime to 
 strengthen their bones ; and lazy-lilce sponges dipping suc- 
 cessfully into it for silica to distend the mouths of their 
 filters. 
 
 Thus, no creature is a fortuitous concourse of atoms. 
 Each is as definite and constant in its chemical composition 
 as it is in its mechanical structure, or its external form. A 
 bird does not more certainly in successive generations in- 
 stinctively build its nest in the same way, than from the first 
 moment of its embryonic life it unconsciously builds its own 
 body out of the same materials, gathering lime to its bones, 
 iron to its blood, and silica to its feathers. 
 
 In this way, through unnumbered centuries, each tribe 
 of organisms has from the period of its creation followed in 
 its structural development, a chemical formula of composi- 
 tion, which in the same species is constant, within narrow 
 limits, for every one of its members, so that each plant and 
 animal has a chemical as well as an anatomical individuality. 
 On analysing an organism, we find certain substances, and 
 only these, present ; and we have made some progress, 
 though as yet it is but small, in establishing the quantities 
 in which those chemical constants occur in different species. 
 I have called them ' constants ' because the first, and, per- 
 haps, the fullest proof that a chemical element is essential 
 to an organism, is its invariable presence in it. A criterion 
 like that by which Viricentius Lirinensis proposed to test 
 Catholic religious doctrine is applicable here : htod semper, 
 quod ubique, quod ab omnibus. Whatever chemical element 
 is found in all the individuals of a species, at all times, and 
 in all .places, is essential to each individual. This criterion 
 requires only the qualification that neither plant nor animal 
 can prevent non-essential substances from entering its body 
 along with its food, and in the air and water on which it so 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 1 1 5 
 
 largely lives ; so that if we analyse it whilst it is thus tra- 
 versed by a non-essential element, we may mistake that for 
 an essential ingredient. But if this unwelcome visitant be 
 not so poisonous as to kill the subject of its intrusion, in 
 which case analysis would be out of the question, it will 
 soon be dismissed, for every organism has as positive a 
 power of refusing as of choosing, and its house is its castle. 
 It would be foolish, accordingly, to act like the census- 
 collectors who count every one a member of the family, 
 whom they find within its house at the moment of knocking 
 at the door. We must, as when analysing inorganic indivi- 
 duals such as crystallized minerals, select various examples 
 from different localities, and analyse each. The essential 
 ingredients may then be readily distinguished from the inci- 
 dental, as well as the extent to which one element is re- 
 placeable by another without departure from the specific 
 chemical type. A chemical formula thus reached, will one 
 day characterize organic species, as it now does inorganic 
 ones. 
 
 Within the limits of variation which such analysis will 
 show, every element discovered in a plant or animal must 
 be regarded as essential to it. The endeavour of some to 
 rank the ingredients found in an organism as important, in 
 proportion as they are present in large or small quantity, is 
 plainly fallacious. Assuredly no substances are more im- 
 portant to all classes of organisms than hydrogen and oxy- 
 gen, which during life predominate in them ; but we are not 
 entitled to affirm that the water of which the blood chiefly 
 consists is a more important vital constituent, than the 
 common salt and the iron which are found in it. Blood is 
 as invariably saline and ferruginous as it is aqueous ; and it 
 would be as unwise to disregard the iron because its amount 
 is small, as it would be to hold the mortar in a building use- 
 
n 6 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 less, because its weight is insignificant compared with that 
 of the stones which it binds together ; or to disregard the 
 nails, because they are few, which unite the planks of a 
 vessel ; or the threads, because they are scanty, which con- 
 vert a dozen furs into a single garment. 
 
 On the other hand, seeing that the more powerful any 
 agent is, the less of it is needed to produce a given effect, 
 very potent chemical elements cannot be expected to occur 
 in large quantities, and hence some have proposed to con- 
 sider the least abundant ingredients of an organism as those 
 most valuable to it ; so that fluorine and silicon would 
 occupy the highest place among the elementary constituents 
 of the animal frame. It is needless to enter into an elabo- 
 rate refutation of this view. We know that one unit by 
 weight of hydrogen is equal in chemical power to 200 such 
 units of a closely analogous body, quicksilver. There is no 
 preponderance of such power on the part of either, but only 
 perfect equality, so that we speak of one and two hundred 
 as the chemical equivalents of these bodies. Quicksilver 
 may represent an abundant organismal element, when con- 
 trasted by equivalent with hydrogen, held to represent a 
 scanty one, but neither chemically excels the other in such 
 proportions ; to compare the chemical powers of equal 
 weights, is to trangress the first law of quantitative chemis- 
 try. We must in the meanwhile be content to ascertain in 
 what proportions the elements of organisms occur in them, 
 with no prejudice in favour of scanty or abundant occur- 
 rence as a measure of importance. 
 
 Seeing, then, that every plant and animal is an edifice 
 like the temple of the Hebrews, built of stones squared and 
 fashioned for their respective places before they were put 
 together, we cannot forbear the question, why were certain 
 building materials chosen rather than others ? This choice 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 1 1 7 
 
 can have been made, no matter how brought about, only 
 because of a peculiar fitness which they possessed beyond 
 those equally accessible, to which they were preferred. Let 
 us try the point in a case or two, and in the following way, 
 limiting ourselves to the human organism. 
 
 Suppose an intelligent person, quite ignorant of both 
 chemistry and physiology, to be taught as much of the latter 
 science as can be learned without an acquaintance with the 
 former, and then to have shown him the properties of all 
 the chemical elements and their chief compounds, after 
 which he is requested to state which of those elements is 
 most likely to occur in the human frame. 
 
 Avoiding all minute details in reference to structural 
 peculiarities, and not even appealing to the microscope (for 
 it would be premature in the present state of our knowledge 
 to attempt to explain the chemical changes which attend 
 the development and metamorphosis of cells), the physio- 
 logist is content to teach his pupil the great general laws 
 which regulate the changes of the human organism during 
 life ; such for example as the following : 
 
 The living body of man unites in itself the contrasted 
 and apparently incompatible qualities, of great stability and 
 great mobility. It is so stable that it can last for three- 
 score years and ten ; for a hundred or more ; maintaining 
 its sharply defined individuality all the time. It is so mo- 
 bile that it does not consist of entirely the same particles 
 during any two successive moments. The dead matter of 
 the outer world it is ever changing into its own living sub- 
 stance, and its living substance it is ever changing into dead 
 matter, which, as alien to itself, it returns to the outer 
 world. Like the heavenly bodies, it undergoes a series of 
 secular variations, which carry it with continually-altering 
 conditions through the several phases of embryonic^ infant, 
 
ii8 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 adolescent, adult, and senile life. Like certain of the 
 heavenly bodies, also, it describes a diurnal revolution, 
 knowing the alternations of sleep and waking, hunger and 
 satiety, activity and rest. The reproduction of its kind 
 involves a peculiar series of very complex changes, espe- 
 cially in the maternal organism. Mechanical injuries, dis- 
 abling or destroying organs and tissues, require the mani- 
 festation of corresponding reparative processes. Disease, 
 equally defacing and destructive, demands a countervailing 
 vis medlcatrix to neutralize its violence ; or rather, disease 
 is a battle between the organismal elements, which are 
 quick at finding a casus bellt^ and are very rarely at perfect 
 peace with each other. Everlasting change, and yet fixity. 
 Unceasing struggle, and yet no schism. Civil war, and yet 
 no anarchy. These unlike conditions are realized and har- 
 monized every moment in our fearfully and wonderfully 
 made bodies. 
 
 If we reduce those apparent incompatibles to their 
 simplest expression, we shall perhaps find it in this. Phy- 
 sically, the human organism is an aggregation of solids and 
 liquids, which are continually changing into each other ; the 
 solid melting into the liquid, the liquid congealing into the 
 solid ; whilst both stand so related to the air, which is the 
 breath of life, that they are continually vaporizing into 
 gases, and gases are continually liquefying and solidifying 
 into them. When Hamlet exclaimed, 
 
 1 O that this too, too solid flesh would melt, 
 Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew !' 
 
 he was preferring a request which was granted before it was 
 preferred, and which is every moment receiving fulfilment 
 in each of us. Blood is liquefied muscle, sinew, nerve, 
 brain, and bone. Bone, brain, nerve, sinew, and muscle 
 are solidified blood ; and at every moment flesh is becom- 
 
Chemical Final Causes. r 1 9 
 
 ing blood, and blood flesh. The current in our veins is at 
 once a River of the Water of Life, feeding and sustaining 
 all that grows along its shores, and a River of the Water 
 of Lethe, quenching in oblivion everything that it touches. 
 Like the Nile or the other great rivers of the world, it is 
 at the same time wearing down hills and building up con- 
 tinents ; but with this difference, that whereas the Nile is 
 only destructive among the mountains of Abyssinia, and 
 only constructive in the plains of Egypt, the blood at every 
 point in its course is simultaneously adding and abstracting. 
 Those wondrous crimson barks or blood-cells which navi- 
 gate the arteries are keen traders, and follow the rule of the 
 African rivers, where sales are effected only by barter ; but 
 they add to this rule one peculiar to themselves, which 
 neither civilized nor savage man cares to follow, namely, 
 that they give away new goods in exchange for old. Here 
 the traffickers on the Red River deposit fresh brain-particles, 
 to replace those which the immaterial spirit has sacrificed 
 to the expression of its thoughts ; for Jeremy Taylor taught 
 a great physical truth when he declared, long ago, that 
 ' whilst we think a thought we die.' The eloquent 
 preacher saw death near us at every moment, and nearer 
 at each than at the moment before ; but death is in us at 
 every moment, and it is not merely whilst^ but because we 
 think a thought we die. Alas ! that we cannot be content 
 with such innocent self-slaughter, which the river of life in 
 our veins forgives into resurrection in every case, as fast 
 as it ripples along. It cannot help us if we overthink our- 
 selves, and die before our time ; but during life its mariners 
 deal in all vital wares. As fast as the blacksmith wastes 
 his muscles by each blow, they barter against the spent 
 cordage of his arm new flesh-particles, to make it strong as 
 before : they restore to its integrity the exhausted auditory 
 
1 20 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 nerve of the musician, give the painter a new retina, and 
 the singer a new tongue. Wherever, in a word, the 
 million lamps of life, which keep up its flame at every point 
 of the body, have burned to the socket, they are replaced by 
 freshly-trimmed ones ; nor is it here as with the barter of 
 Aladdin's lamp. The new lamp is in this case the magic 
 one ; the genie has departed from the old. 
 
 Chemically, again, the human organism is the continual 
 subject of swift changes of its composition in opposite 
 directions. One half of the blood, which is in the arteries, 
 is always in one chemical condition ; the other half, which 
 is in the veins, is in another condition ; and the whole blood 
 is at all times rapidly transferred through these alternations. 
 The arterial blood is charged with oxygen ; the venous with 
 carbonic acid. These gases are partly the causes, partly 
 the effects, partly the indices of chemical differences be- 
 tween the two bloods, which affect, probably, more or less 
 all their respective ingredients. At one half-revolution of 
 the circulation, they are changed in one way at the capil- 
 laries of the luns, whilst oxygen is absorbed ; at the other 
 half-revolution, they are changed in another way at the 
 capillaries of the system, whilst oxygen is lost, and carbonic 
 acid takes its place. 
 
 There is thus continual addition of matter to the body, 
 and continual withdrawal of matter from it; but, apart 
 from this, and within the ring-fence of its own organism, 
 a process of combustion, and one the very reverse, are 
 going on together. Our bodies are at all times like the 
 fire which was shown to the hero of the Pilgrim's Progress 
 in Interpreter's House, which had water poured on it on 
 one side of the wall against which it blazed, and oil on the 
 other. Here one tissue is burning like fuel, and there 
 another is becoming the depository of combustible matter. 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 121 
 
 We have, as it were, millions of microscopic wind- furnaces 
 converting into carbonic acid, water-vapour, and other pro- 
 ducts of combustion, all the combustible elements of the 
 body ; and millions of blast-furnaces reducing the starch 
 and sugar of the food, and the sulphates and phosphates of 
 the body, into inflammable oils and other fuels, which are 
 finally transferred to the wind-furnaces and burned there. 
 Burning, and what we must call in contradistinction, un- 
 burning^ thus proceed together ; the flame of life, like a 
 blow-pipe flame, exhibiting an oxidizing and a reducing 
 action at points not far distant from each other. 
 
 There are thus, as concerns the organism, continual 
 addition and continual abstraction ; continual physical alter- 
 nation of liquefaction and solidification ; continual chemi- 
 cal alternation of combustion and reduction. The blood- 
 vessels are at once the water-pipes of the city of Mansoul, 
 bringing fresh springs into it, and the drain-tunnels carrying 
 all that is waste and useless away. The heart is the one 
 true conjuror's bottle, pouring forth, ay and at the same 
 time, liquids the most unlike to satisfy thirsts as strange ; 
 saliva to wet the lips, tears to relieve the eye, milk to swell 
 the mother's breast, and oil to make supple the wrestler's 
 limbs. The whole organism is, as the old writers loved to 
 call it, a Microcosm^'w world in little, where in one land 
 they are rejoicing, and in another weeping ; where on this 
 shore they are singing Te Deum, and on that shore Mise- 
 rere ; where at the same moment it is. ' a time to love and 
 a time to hate, a time of war and a time of peace.' 
 
 Such is the human body, ever changing, ever abiding. 
 A temple, always complete, and yet always under repair. 
 A mansion, which quite contents its possessor, and yet has 
 its plan and its materials altered each moment. A machine, 
 which never stops working, and yet is taken to pieces in 
 
122 R eligio- Chemici. 
 
 the one twinkling of an eye, and put together in the other. 
 A cloth of gold, to which the needle is ever adding on one 
 side of a line, and from which the scissors are ever cutting 
 away on the other. Yes ! Life, like Penelope of old, is 
 ever weaving and unweaving the same web, whilst her 
 grim suitors, Disease and Death, watch for her halting ; 
 only for her there is no Ulysses, who one day will in 
 triumph return. 
 
 If the imperfect description which has been given of the 
 human organism is in any respect faithful, it is manifest 
 that the chemical elements which enter into its composition 
 must exhibit the contrasted stability and mobility which so 
 strikingly characterize itself. Suppose, then, our physiolo- 
 gist's pupil, guided by this rule, to study the chemist's ele- 
 mentary bodies, with a view to discover which of them are 
 most suited for the living frame. Is it likely that among 
 the sixty he would select only seventeen ? that he would 
 select the actual seventeen which are found ? that he would 
 even prefer non-metallic to metallic matter ? or assign any 
 place to abundant constituents, such as the metal of lime, 
 or to never-failing unabundant ones, such as fluorine ? He 
 would probably select air and water, but beyond these I 
 feel quite unable to surmise how far his Frankenstein would 
 agree in composition with the Homo Sapiens of Linnaeus. 
 At all events, the chances are very great that he would 
 pass over entirely that remarkable group of elements, in 
 which two of the most characteristic ingredients of all 
 animal organisms are included. This group contains four 
 bodies, Phosphorus, Arsenic, Antimony, Nitrogen, with 
 an outlying fifth one, Bismuth, which I do not at present 
 consider ; and, in the whole category of elements, no four 
 at first sight seem more unfitted for organismal constituents 
 than they. Phosphorus has been known for two centuries 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 1 23 
 
 as a dangerous combustible, and most deadly poison, which 
 the sad and often fatal experience of the lucifer- match 
 makers has shown to possess a peculiar antipathy to the 
 bones, for, when it can reach them, as it can those of the 
 jaws, it rots them away. On the poisonous properties of 
 arsenic it is quite needless to dwell. Antimony, or Anti- 
 Monk, betrays by its name a deadliness to man, akin to 
 that of its name-sister, Monkshood, a still more potent 
 killer ; and for both, all men are monks. Nitrogen, on 
 the other hand, has seemingly no properties at all ; a light, 
 thin, tasteless, insipid, insoluble, incombustible gas, to 
 appearance good for nothing, and as such fitly symbolized 
 in chemical tables by the letter N. Two murderers, a 
 dangerous mediciner, and an incapable, are surely not the 
 parties to whom any one would propose to intrust our 
 lives ! Yet the fiery phosphorus and the negative nitro- 
 gen are the two elements which, by their greater abund- 
 ance in animals, and the part which they play there, most 
 strikingly distinguish animals from plants ; and they are 
 specially important in relation to the human organism. 
 When, moreover, we study those two elements more par- 
 ticularly, they singularly change characters ; phosphorus, 
 on a closer acquaintance, proving to be a very healthful 
 and friendly occupant of the body ; nitrogen prone to con- 
 ceal under its look of helpless indifference the most ener- 
 getic powers of making and marring, so that when occasion 
 calls, it proves better at killing and slaying than any one of 
 its more demonstrative brethren. 
 
 Into a more detailed consideration of these elements I 
 will now enter, in the hope of showing, that though we 
 might not have anticipated their presence in our bodies, we 
 can point out many reasons why they actually are there. 
 First of phosphorus. Its importance to the human organ- 
 
124 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 ism is shown, u/, by its invariable presence in it ; 2^, by 
 the abundance of its presence ; 3^, by the universality of 
 its presence ; \th, by the diversified manifestations of its 
 presence ; 5/A, by the active part which it takes in the most 
 energetic vital processes, such as absorption, secretion, nu- 
 trition, reproduction, sensation, emotion, and all the other 
 forms of nervous or cerebral action ; 6M, by the invariable 
 loss of health which attends its withdrawal from the body ; 
 jthj by its efficacy as a restorative. A substance which is 
 alike present in the hardest bone and the most pulpy nerve, 
 which occurs in one form or rather series of forms in the 
 blood, in another series in the flesh-juices, in a third in the 
 milk, in a fourth in the brain, and probably in other modi- 
 fications elsewhere in the organism, and which is associated 
 with all its critical changes, must be pre-eminently service- 
 able to the body. 
 
 Phosphorus occurs in all organisms chiefly as phosphoric 
 acid, in union with water, with mineral and organic bases, 
 with fatty bodies, and in other forms of organic combina- 
 tion as yet little understood. The following exposition of 
 the properties of the element and its chief organismal com- 
 pounds may illustrate why it is so serviceable to the body. 
 
 I. Phosphorus is remarkable for the Protean shapes 
 which it can assume. Some elementary bodies, such as 
 gold, are familiar to us in one form, and that so beautiful 
 that we are not curious to inquire whether the metal can 
 assume other and less noble shapes. In truth we have 
 but recently fully realized that a multitude of the chemical 
 elements can masquerade in disguises, through which we 
 with difficulty realize their individuality. Among those 
 masqueraders a first place must be given to the element 
 under notice. 
 
 Since about 1660, we have been familiar with phospho- 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 125 
 
 rus as a soft, semi-transparent, nearly colourless wax-like 
 substance, possessed of a glassy structure, exhaling in the 
 air an odour of garlic, shining even at the freezing point of 
 water, melting a hundred degrees below the boiling point 
 (111-5 Fahr.) of that liquid, bursting into flame in the air at 
 a temperature a little higher, and yielding a thick white smoke 
 condensing into a snow of phosphoric acid. This form of 
 the element we have learned to distinguish as vitreous phos- 
 phorus. It is so inflammable, that it can be preserved with 
 safety only under water ; and there is scarcely a chemist 
 who has not been in some degree a martyr to its flames. 
 It is so poisonous, that not a year passes without some poor 
 child falling a victim to the minute portion which it thought- 
 lessly eats from a lucifer-match, and without some uncau- 
 tioned lucifer-match-maker suffering the prolonged tortures 
 of slow poisoning, which its daily administration in infini- 
 tesimal doses infallibly occasions. It reacts so powerfully 
 upon the air in which it is permitted to fume, that it 
 changes its oxygen into the energetic, oxidizing, deodoriz- 
 ing, and bleaching agent which is known as ozone. In a 
 word, it exhibits in an intense degree an affinity, or ten- 
 dency to combine, alike with metals and non-metals, and 
 strikingly alters each by its union with it. 
 
 In so far, then, as mobility, or susceptibility of various 
 change is concerned, no one will question the fitness of 
 phosphorus to become an organismal element. But till 
 recently, we had not discovered that it can change this 
 mobile, restless, agonistic condition for one of passive in- 
 difference and great stability. 
 
 Recent researches have shown that vitreous phosphorus 
 is susceptible of no fewer than five modifications. 
 
 u/, It may be altered from the glassy to the crystalline 
 condition. 
 
1 2 6 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 2^/, By exposure under water to air and light, it be- 
 comes a white^ opaque, sparingly fusible body. 
 
 3<^, By fusion and sudden cooling at a comparatively low 
 temperature, it becomes black and opaque. 
 
 4//j, By elevation to near its boiling point, and sudden 
 cooling, it becomes viscid like sulphur in the same circum- 
 stances, and retains for a considerable period a consistence 
 like that of caoutchouc. 
 
 5//2, By exposure to the rays of the sun in a vacuum, 
 or in a gas free from oxygen, or in water free from air, and 
 excluded from air, it changes into an amorphous red solid. 
 
 Thus we know phosphorus as 
 
 1. A symmetrical crystal. 
 
 2. A true vitreous body, or glass. 
 
 3. A soft elastic substance like caoutchouc. 
 
 4. A white amorphous solid. 
 
 5. A black amorphous solid. 
 
 6. A red amorphous solid. 1 
 
 The crystalline phosphorus and the vitreous closely corre- 
 spond in chemical characters, and we know little of the 
 elastic, the white, and the black varieties ; but the possi- 
 bility of producing them illustrates how susceptible phos- 
 phorus is of many modifications, and in the red amorphous 
 modification we have an indifferent form of the element, so 
 unlike that in which we are accustomed to see phosphorus, 
 that though it has been in the chemist's hands for more than 
 a century, he has only very recently recognised that it is 
 phosphorus. 
 
 It is now, however, manufactured on the large scale, 2 so 
 
 1 See Gmelin's Handbook of Chemistry, Cavendish Soc. Trans., article Phos- 
 phorus. Prof. W. A. Miller's Chemistry, vol. ii. p. 593. Graham's Chemistry, 
 
 vol. i. p. 431. 
 
 2 Messrs. Albright, near Birmingham, have for the last five or six years pre- 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 127 
 
 that its properties may be stated and illustrated in full. It 
 is neither crystalline nor glassy, but amorphous, and heavier 
 than the familiar forms of phosphorus. It does not shine 
 at the heat of freezing water, nor melt even at that of boil- 
 ing water. It exhales at ordinary temperatures no vapour 
 and no odour, nor does it become oxidized in the air, or 
 change it into ozone. It is not poisonous even when 
 directly administered in doses a hundred times greater than 
 those which are fatal with vitreous phosphorus, and it may 
 be handled with impunity. Towards other elements it 
 shows in general a singular indifference, nor is it till we 
 raise it to the temperature of 500 Fahr., some 470 above 
 the heat necessary to make vitreous phosphorus begin to 
 burn, that it starts into activity, bursting into flame, and 
 yielding phosphoric acid. It appears to owe its peculiarities 
 to the presence in it of much latent heat, so that it differs 
 from vitreous phosphorus as steam does from water, and 
 water from ice, for it is most easily produced by long main- 
 tenance of the common phosphorus at a temperature below 
 490, and when heated above this point it suddenly bursts 
 into vapour, changing with evolution of heat into the fami- 
 liar modification of the element. But it can be produced 
 by a brief exposure of the vitreous phosphorus to light, in a 
 vacuum or non-oxygenous atmosphere, and when common 
 phosphorus is kindled in air, it always changes in part into 
 the red amorphous modification, which remains when the 
 non-amorphous portion has burned away ; and some in- 
 teresting researches of Professor Brodie appear to prove 
 
 pared red phosphorus according to Schrotter's process, which they have patented. 
 I am indebted to these gentlemen for the opportunity of examining large speci- 
 mens of this important substance, which promises, by its comparative harmless- 
 ness, to render the manufacture, use, and carriage of lucifer matches much less 
 dangerous than they are at present. 
 
128 R eligio- Ch emici . 
 
 that the change may attend the combination of phosphorus 
 with other bodies. 
 
 Here then is an element which can imperceptibly and 
 quickly pass from a condition of great chemical activity to 
 one of great chemical inertness. I suggest this susceptibility 
 of change as one reason why phosphorus is a predominant 
 organismal element. Without insisting on its sixfold muta- 
 bility, let its twofold mobility, of which we are quite certain, 
 be kept in view. Phosphorus, in virtue of this, may follow 
 the blood in its changes, may oxidize in the one great set of 
 capillaries, and be indifferent to oxygen in the other ; may 
 occur in the brain in the vitreous form, changing as quickly 
 as the intellect or imagination demands, and literally flam- 
 ing, that thoughts may breathe and words may burn ; and 
 may be present in the bones in its amorphous form, content, 
 like an impassive caryatid, to sustain upon its unwearied 
 shoulders the mere dead weight of stones of flesh. And 
 what is said here of the brain, as contrasted with the bones, 
 will apply with equal or similar force to many other organs 
 of the body. All throughout the living system we may 
 believe that phosphorus is found, at the centres of vital 
 action in the active condition, and at its outlying points in 
 the passive condition. In the one case, it is like the soldier 
 with his loaded musket pressed to his shoulder, and his 
 finger on the trigger, almost anticipating the command to 
 fire ; in the other, it is like the same soldier with his un- 
 loaded weapon at his side, standing at ease. 
 
 Phosphorus will react also on other bodies, according to 
 its own condition ; and as it appears that vitreous phospho- 
 rus not only oxidizes with great rapidity when it encounters 
 air, but at the same time changes that air in part into ozone, 
 i.e.) greatly exalts its oxidizing power, it will be seen that 
 the quick oxidation of phosphorus within the organism may 
 
Chemical Final Causes. i 2 9 
 
 often imply the simultaneous quick oxidation (through the 
 ozone it generates) of all the surrounding oxidable sub- 
 stances. 
 
 It is premature to speculate on such matters, but it is de- 
 sirable to notice emphatically, that physiology has not yet 
 recognised the importance of that susceptibility of molecular 
 change which chemists specify by the name of ' Allotropy.' 
 It increases alike the difficulties and the resources of biology. 
 Hitherto, we have begun with each element as if it had one 
 narrowly-defined set of sensible characters, which we have 
 briefly enumerated ; and thereafter we have proceeded to 
 consider its chemical compounds, with the exposition of 
 which our zoo-chemical demonstrations have commenced. 
 But now it appears that what we regarded as the basement 
 floor, level with the ground, was at least one storey above 
 it, and when we dig away the sand, we find vault covering 
 vault, and know not as yet how many storeys lie below. 
 Among organismal elements, not only phosphorus, but oxy- 
 gen, carbon, sulphur, and chlorine are known to admit of 
 molecular modifications. The tendency, indeed, of dis- 
 covery is to show that every chemical element is in this 
 predicament, for every day adds to the number of allotropic 
 substances. Moreover, we can confidently affirm, that 
 when they enter into combination, the compounds which 
 they form often reflect the image of the modification which 
 characterized the element at the moment of its combination, 
 and that we may have oxides, for- example, of the same 
 composition (so far, at least, as ponderable constituents are 
 concerned), yet very different in property. 
 
 As pre-eminent among the possessors of this variability, 
 phosphorus is more suitable than any element we yet know, 
 to minister to the unchanging change of the living body. 
 
 It is not, however, as elemental phosphorus, intricately 
 
1 3 o Religio- Chemici. 
 
 combined with organized molecules, in ways which the 
 chemist cannot interpret in his study or imitate in his labo- 
 ratory, that this organismal constant chiefly occurs. As 
 already stated, it is present in living bodies chiefly as its 
 highest oxide, phosphoric acid. 
 
 When a bone is burned to whiteness in the open air, it 
 yields a crumbling chalk-like solid, significantly called bone- 
 earth, of which the larger part is lime, whilst the remainder 
 is in great part phosphoric acid. This acid can be separated 
 from the bone-earth, by pouring oil of vitriol upon it, and 
 its properties as the dominant acid of all the higher sentient 
 organisms, are now to be considered. 
 
 Phosphoric acid has all the properties of the most power- 
 ful acids. It dissolves in water. It is intensely sour. It 
 reddens all acidifiable vegetable blues. It perfectly saturates 
 powerful bases. In these respects it agrees with sulphuric, 
 nitric, hydrochloric, and acetic acids. But from all other 
 acids possessing such properties, it differs in several singu- 
 lar ways, and these differences point to the cause of its 
 organismal pre-eminence. 
 
 The first remarkable difference is its freedom from cor- 
 rosiveness. The acids named above, even when consider- 
 ably diluted with water, rapidly disintegrate organic bodies, 
 and in their strongest aqueous dilutions, act like hot irons on 
 the skin. A drop of oil of vitriol, or of the strongest aqua- 
 fortis, burns the flesh like a live coal, and unless mingled 
 with much water, excites painful and dangerous inflamma- 
 tion of the tissues. But the phosphoric acid extracted from 
 bones, even when combined with a chemical minimum of 
 water, and concentrated into a crystallizable hydrate, may 
 be spread for a considerable time over the thinnest skin of 
 the living body without burning, paining, or inflaming it. 
 It is thus of all the strong acids we know, the only one 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 1 3 1 
 
 which can be set free, and that in a concentrated form, 
 within living organisms, without causing their destruction. 
 In this peculiarity I find one cause of its universal presence 
 in the body ; for whatever services an acid can render to an 
 active organism, phosphoric acid can render to the full with- 
 out harming it. 1 
 
 A second peculiarity of phosphoric acid is, that, unlike 
 the majority of equally strong acids, it does not coagulate 
 albumen. And as this substance, familiar to all in white 
 of egg, is largely present in the flesh, the natural juice of 
 which contains partially-neutralized phosphoric acid, a and 
 is also largely present in the brain and nerves, associated 
 with a modification of the same acid known as oleo- 
 phosphoric acid, we can affirm at least that the solitary 
 potent inorganic acid compatible with the non-coagulation 
 of albumen, is the only one found in a free (or at least 
 partially free) state, in association with the liquid form of 
 that important organismal constituent. These peculiarities, 
 however, are as nothing compared with the third, which 
 calls for special notice. The majority of acids which are 
 soluble in water exhibit their characteristic properties most 
 markedly when associated with the chemical minimum of 
 water which can combine with them, and when more water 
 is added, they show in a less degree, according to their 
 dilution, such qualities as sourness, power to alter vegetable 
 colours, and to saturate bases. There is thus but one sul- 
 phuric or nitric acid. The less water united with either, 
 the more powerful it is, and the greater the weight of 
 base it can neutralize. In the language of quantitative 
 
 1 It seems worth the consideration of surgeons, whether common phosphoric 
 acid, in virtue of its unirritating action on living tissues, and its solvent action on 
 phosphatic calculi, may not as a lit holy tic be brought in direct contact with vesical 
 concretions of the non-acid class, and render in some cases operations unnecessary. 
 
 2 The tribasic, acid phosphate of potash (z HO, KO -f- PO 5 ). 
 
i j 2 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 chemistry, one equivalent (or chemical unit) of nitric acid 
 can combine with one equivalent of a base, neither more 
 nor less. This is the general rule. One unit by weight 
 of an acid unites with one unit of base, and here the 
 neutralizing power of the former stops, so that as dilution 
 by water implies the spreading of the efficacious unit over 
 a wider area, a given weight of diluted acid must neutralize 
 a smaller weight of an undiluted base than the same weight 
 of stronger acid will neutralize. Hence, the less amount 
 of water, the greater the acidity of the acid ; and unit of 
 acid to unit of water is the condition of greatest strength. 
 
 But to this widely applicable rule phosphoric acid forms 
 a remarkable exception. It is most acid when united, not 
 with one, but with three units of water. In this condition, 
 it is extracted from bones, and found (at least after death) 
 in the blood and flesh. One unit of the acid crystallizes 
 along with three units of water, and retains these in special 
 combination to whatever extent it is diluted with more 
 water. Its neutralizing power, moreover, is correspond- 
 ingly threefold, so that, for example, in the bones one equi- 
 valent of it is combined with three equivalents of lime, 
 whilst all the other bone-acids are united in single units, 
 with a single unit of lime. An endless series of salts, 
 similar to bone-phosphate, but containing other bases than 
 lime, are known to chemists, who distinguish them, as a 
 class, as the tribasic phosphates. The organismal import- 
 ance, however, of this property of phosphoric acid will not 
 appear till we look to a fourth peculiarity which it pos- 
 sesses. 
 
 Phosphoric acid has the singular power of dropping or cast- 
 ing off, as it were, one of the three units of water which 
 it is able to retain, keeping only two, and refusing, even 
 though dissolved in volumes of water, to take back the 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 133 
 
 third. In this modification (which is known as pyro- 
 phosphoric acid), it has not a threefold, but only a twofold 
 power of neutralizing bases, so that, for example, as it 
 occurs in burnt ^bones, one equivalent is united with but 
 two equivalents of magnesia, and an extensive series of 
 corresponding salts is known, distinguished as the bibasic 
 phosphates. 
 
 But further, pyro-phosphoric acid can part with one of 
 the two units of water which it characteristically retains, 
 as common phosphoric acid can part at once with two of 
 its three characteristic units of water, both becoming, like 
 the ordinary mineral acids, a compound of unit of acid to 
 unit of water, with a onefold power of neutralizing bases. 
 This modification has been called meta-phosphoric acid. 
 It also forms a large series of salts, all containing one 
 equivalent of acid to one equivalent of base, and distin- 
 guished as monobasic phosphates. 
 
 Meta-phosphoric acid, unlike the other hydrates of the 
 acid, coagulates albumen. Dissolved in cold water, it 
 slowly takes to itself two additional units of that body ; 
 and if boiled with the liquid, it takes them with great 
 rapidity. 
 
 We have thus to begin with a snow-like soft solid, called 
 anhydrous phosphoric acid, procured by burning dry phos- 
 phorus in equally dry air. When we dissolve it in water, 
 it so unites with that liquid as to produce, according to 
 circumstances, three acid solutions, as distinct from each 
 other in all their properties as if they were composed of 
 totally different ingredients. These three solutions, dis- 
 tinguished as common phosphoric, pyro-phosphoric, and 
 meta-phosphoric acids (of which the first two are crystal- 
 lizable as solids), are mutually convertible by loss or gain 
 of two units or chemical equivalents of water ; the first 
 
1 3 4 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 named, which retains three such units, being the most 
 stable, and the last, which retains but one aqueous unit, 
 the least so. 1 The chief organismal acid is thus equal in 
 powers to three ordinary acids, and strikingly exhibits the 
 quality of mobility or variability, which has been shown to 
 be so essential to the active components of living organ- 
 isms. Yet triply potent as phosphoric acid is, it does not, 
 in any of its modifications, exhibit corrosiveness or poison- 
 ousness. This has already been referred to as character- 
 izing the tribasic acid, but is still more remarkable as 
 characterizing the bibasic and monobasic acid, for the 
 general rule is, that the less the amount of water in a 
 hydrated acid, the more caustic, corrosive, and poisonous 
 it is. But even anhydrous phosphoric acid half-deliquesced, 
 may be kept in contact with the skin for an hour without 
 injury, where the similar hydrate of sulphuric acid would 
 in a few minutes reduce the tissue to charcoal. 
 
 The innocuousness, indeed, of the strongest phosphoric 
 acid is, in many respects, as inexplicable as it is paradoxi- 
 cal. Chemists refer the caustic action of strong sulphuric, 
 nitric, hydrochloric, and acetic acids, in great part, to their 
 
 1 The three hydrates of phosphoric acid, taken in the same order as in the text, 
 are best distinguished as tribasic, bibasic, and monobasic phosphoric acid, according 
 to the nomenclature of Thomas Graham, Esq., Master of the Mint, our greatest 
 authority on the subject. On the binary theory of acids and salts, each of Mr. 
 Graham's hydrates is represented as a peculiar hydracid : 
 
 Thus, Tribasic Acid, . . . PO 8 + H 3 
 Bibasic Acid, . . . PO 7 + H 2 
 
 Monobasic Acid, . . . PO 6 + H 
 
 It is quite immaterial to the argument pursued in the text, which of the rival 
 theories of acids be adopted. On both views, the same weight of the same three 
 ingredients, phosphorus, oxygen, and hydrogen, is recognised as present: The 
 only matter in dispute is, the mode in which the ingredients are arranged. Mr. 
 Graham's view is preferred as the one more easily followed by those who have 
 not made chemistry a special study. 
 
Chemical Final Causes. . 135 
 
 intense affinity for water, which they compel the organic 
 bodies touched by them to give up, so that their chemical 
 integrity is destroyed. But the water which these corrosive 
 acids take from an organized structure, anhydrous phos- 
 phoric acid can take from them. The most caustic acids 
 known to us are, probably, sulphuric and hydrofluoric acid, 
 but the strong hydrates of both are rendered anhydrous by 
 phosphoric acid, which, nevertheless, does not possess a 
 trace of their causticity. It has latterly come into extensive 
 and most important use among scientific chemists, as a means 
 of dehydrating or rendering waterless other substances, so 
 remarkably does it excel them in affinity for water, and yet 
 the powers which they owe to such an affinity are not ex- 
 hibited by it. It is thus a lord paramount among acids, 
 compelling its barons to surrender to it the prey which they 
 have taken from the innocents, but never found robbing the 
 innocents itself. 
 
 There is much, indeed, as yet unaccounted for in the 
 relation of phosphoric acid to water. One should expect 
 such a substance to dissolve in this liquid with the greatest 
 rapidity ; yet the anhydrous acid, though it hisses like hot 
 iron when it meets water, and shows by the heat which it 
 evolves an intense affinity for it, seems to retain that affinity 
 only for a moment, and to have its thirst quenched by the 
 first draught of, or rather sip of liquid, for it dissolves slowly, 
 like snow which has barely reached the thawing tempera- 
 ture. Anhydrous sulphuric acid, on the other hand, not 
 only undergoes aqueous solution with great energy and 
 rapidity, but, long after it has acquired its unit of water, 
 continues eagerly to combine with more, absorbing its 
 vapour from the atmosphere, so as to desiccate everything 
 in its neighbourhood ; and the other strong acids have a 
 similar power. Phosphoric acid is thus like a feverish 
 
1 3 6 R eligio- Chemici. 
 
 child, begging for a great bowl of water, but pushing it 
 away the moment its lips are wetted. Sulphuric acid is 
 like the sufferer from a gunshot wound, whose insatiable 
 craving for water, no number of goblets can appease ; and 
 yet the former acid can drink the latter dry. 
 
 Whatever be the explanation of this anomaly, the impor- 
 tant fact remains, that phosphoric acid is at once more 
 powerful than strong sulphuric acid, and less irritant than 
 weak vinegar, so that it can innocently traverse every part 
 of the body. But of what service, it may be asked, is it to 
 the body to be traversed by an acid whether innocuous or 
 irritant ? To this, in the meanwhile, it will be sufficient to 
 reply, that the chief chemical compounds in the organism 
 either are or contain salts, which are produced by the union 
 of acids with bases. A great part, therefore, of organismal 
 chemistry is the chemistry of acids ; and we are now to 
 look at the way in which phosphoric acid, when it ceases 
 to be free and unites with bases, serves the organism by the 
 kind of salts which it forms. Common or tribasic phos- 
 phoric acid, i.e.) I unit of anhydrous phosphoric acid com- 
 bined with 3 units of water, can exchange these in whole 
 or in part for units of base. 1 It may exchange the water 
 entirely for one base, as it does when it forms the bone- 
 phosphate of lime, which consists of 3 units of lime to I of 
 anhydrous phosphoric acid ; or it may give away only 2 
 units of water, receiving in return the same number of units 
 of base, as in the phosphate of soda of the blood, which 
 consists of 2 units of soda and I unit of water, added to the 
 constant unit of anhydrous acid ; or it may give away only 
 
 1 Strictly speaking, the water is acting as base, so that the exchange is of units 
 of aqueous base for units of some other base, but as it might confuse the general 
 reader to call water a base, I have avoided this mode of expression although it is 
 the customary one among chemists. 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 1 3 7 
 
 i unit of water and receive in return I unit of base, as in 
 the phosphate of potash of the flesh, which consists of 2 
 units of water and I of potash to I of acid. Moreover, 
 where I unit of water is retained, each of the 2 given away 
 may be exchanged for a separate base as in microcosmic 
 salt, where i unit of soda, I unit of ammonia (oxide of 
 ammonium), and i unit of water, are together combined 
 with i unit of acid. The same acid thus forms, by varia- 
 tions of base, soluble, insoluble, acid, alkaline, and neutral 
 salts. Further : whereas with the same base, ordinary acids 
 form but one salt or compound, tribasic phosphoric acid can 
 form three. Thus, whether we add caustic soda or carbon- 
 ate of soda, or muriate of soda (chloride of sodium), to sul- 
 phuric acid, we obtain the same Glauber's salt or sulphate of 
 soda containing I unit of acid to i unit of base. But if we 
 evaporate together tribasic phosphoric acid and caustic soda, 
 we obtain a salt with 3 units of soda to I of anhydrous 
 acid : if we pour on carbonate of soda the tribasic liquid, 
 we obtain a salt containing 2 units of soda (and I of water) 
 to i of anhydrous acid ; and if we substitute muriate for 
 carbonate of soda, we obtain a salt containing i unit of soda 
 (and 2 of water) to i of anhydrous acid. Muriate and car- 
 bonate of soda are both largely present in the body, and 
 phosphoric acid must continually encounter them, but it 
 will form a different salt with each, where sulphuric and all 
 ordinary acids would form the same salt with both. 
 
 Once more : when tribasic phosphoric acid by parting 
 with i unit of water becomes bibasic, it may form salts 
 with i unit of water and I of base ; or with two units of the 
 same base ; or with 2 units each of a different base ; and 
 when the tribasic acid parts with 2 units of water and be- 
 comes monobasic, it can act the part of an ordinary acid. 
 Moreover, without loss or gain, but only by a new arrange- 
 
138 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 ment of particles, a hydrated phosphate of one class may 
 change into a phosphate of another. 
 
 Even this lengthened statement does not exhaust the 
 modifications of phosphoric acid ; two additional classes of 
 salts have been described, 1 and phosphates of different 
 classes can unite as salts with each other. The number 
 accordingly of possible phosphates is beyond calculation, and 
 the quality of variability appears at its maximum in the 
 compounds of phosphoric acid. 
 
 Limiting our attention to the well-known modifications 
 of phosphoric acid, we may sketch in outline how they may 
 render service to the body. The sketch can be only a 
 fancy-picture, yet it may be one mirroring and shadowing, 
 however faintly, the reality of nature. 
 
 A child is beginning to walk, and the bones of its limbs 
 must be strengthened and hardened. Phosphoric acid ac- 
 cordingly carries with it 3 units of lime to them, and renders 
 them solid and firm. But the bones of its skull must remain 
 comparatively soft and yielding, for it has many a fall, and 
 the more elastic these bones are, the less will it suffer when 
 its head strikes a hard object, so that in them we may sup- 
 pose the phosphoric acid to retain but 2 units of lime and to 
 form a softer, less consistent solid. And the cartilages of 
 the ribs must be still more supple and elastic, so that in 
 them the phosphoric acid may be supposed to be combined 
 with but one unit of base, as the uncrystalline gelatinous 
 metaphosphate. 2 On the other hand, its teeth must be 
 
 1 Fleitmann and Henneberg's phosphates, intermediate between the monobasic 
 and bibasic classes, and Maddrell's peculiar double metaphosphates, are described 
 and commented on by Mr. Graham in his Elements of Chemistry, vol. i. zd edit, 
 pp. 448, 449. 
 
 2 * Von Bibra has made the beautiful observation that those bones which are 
 the most exposed to mechanical influences contain the largest quantity of earthy 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 139 
 
 harder than its hardest bones, and a new demand is made 
 on lime-phosphates to associate themselves with other lime 
 salts (especially fluoride of calcium) to form the cutting 
 edges and grinding faces of the incisors and molars. All the 
 while also, the blood must be kept alkaline, that oxidation 
 of the tissues may be promoted, and albumen retained in 
 solution ; and yet it must not be too alkaline, or tissues and 
 albumen will both be destroyed, and the carbonic acid de- 
 veloped at the systemic capillaries will not be exchanged for 
 oxygen, when the blood is exposed to that gas at the lungs. 
 So, phosphoric acid provides a salt containing 2 units of 
 soda and i of water which is sufficiently alkaline to promote 
 oxidation, dissolve albumen, and absorb carbonic acid, and 
 yet holds the latter so loosely, that it instantly exchanges it 
 for oxygen, when it encounters that gas in the pulmonary 
 capillaries. Again : the flesh-juice must be kept acid (per- 
 haps as has been suggested, in electro-polar opposition to 
 the alkalinity of the blood, as affecting the transmission of 
 the electrical currents which are now known to traverse the 
 tissues), and phosphoric acid provides a salt, containing 2 
 units of water and I of potash, which secures the requisite 
 
 constituents (chiefly phosphate of lime.) The action of this law is manifested even 
 in different families of the same class of animals ; thus, for instance, in the Rasores 
 or scraping birds, the femur contains the largest quantity of phosphate of lime, in 
 the Grallatores or waders, the tibia, and in all other birds the humerus.' Leh- 
 mann's Physiological Chemistry, Cav. Soc. Trans., vol. i. p. 414. 
 
 The phosphate of lime in bones was represented by Berzelius as 8 Ca O, 3 POg ; 
 but according to Heintz and Rose it has the composition given previously in the 
 text, 3 Ca, O, PO's- In reality, however, neither of these formulae will always apply 
 to bones, although the latter probably represents the condition of the greater part of 
 their lime phosphate. From my own results, and those of others in the course of 
 agricultural analyses of bone earth, I cannot avoid inferring that several phosphates 
 of lime exist in bones, although in the ash of the latter the nature of these salts as 
 they occurred in the living organism cannot be ascertained. I have felt at liberty 
 accordingly to assume as possible the phosphates, referred to in the text as existing 
 in the child's skull and ribs. 
 
1 40 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 acidity. Further : in some of the serous and other liquids 
 of the body, a changeable salt is required ; and for this 
 phosphoric acid provides, by combining with soda, ammo- 
 nia, and water, to produce microcosmic salt which is alkaline 
 in its integrity, but by parting with the easily lost, volatile 
 ammonia, becomes acid. 1 
 
 All those compounds are needed in the adult as well as 
 in the infant organism. With the adult we may further 
 connect such an incident as the fracture of a bone, which is 
 repaired by a beautiful process of splicing, during which 
 phosphates, first very soluble, then moderately so, then 
 slightly so, are finally succeeded by dense insoluble bone- 
 earth, filling up the breach till it becomes the strongest part 
 of the reunited bone. And as counterpart of this, we have 
 the most solid bone dissolving under the pressure of a throb- 
 bing (aneurismal) blood-vessel, which unless the bone gave 
 way would first torture, and then kill the whole body. 
 Particle by particle, the petrified ivory is pressed, softened, 
 melted, dissolved, and washed away by the same potent 
 acid which hardened it from a thin liquid into a compact 
 solid. 
 
 At all periods, moreover, in the life of the body, the liquid 
 albumen and fibrin of the blood are becoming solid albumen 
 and fibrin in the tissues. Both are also becoming, in the 
 nursing mother, the casein of her milk, and that casein in 
 her suckling's body is becoming the albumen and fibrin 
 of its flesh and blood, and building up its organs in other 
 ways. 
 
 Each of these blood-forming, flesh-forming, milk-form- 
 ing, tissue-forming bodies, albumen, fibrin, and casein, and 
 likewise their analogue gelatine, are inseparably accompanied 
 in all their liquefactions, solidifications, and transmutations 
 
 1 Lehmann's Physiol. Chem. Cav. Soc. Trans., vol. i. p. 369. 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 141 
 
 by phosphates, which, in virtue of their mobility, are able 
 to liquefy, solidify, and undergo transmutation as the body 
 which they accompany does. We cannot pretend to follow 
 those changes step by step, for they occur within the inac- 
 cessible penetralia of a living structure ; but certain it is 
 that the phosphates accommodate themselves to changes 
 which no other salts we know could submit to. 
 
 In the particular cases given above, there may be great . 
 misapprehension and even signal error. But in the general 
 estimate of the organismal suitableness of phosphates beyond 
 all other salts, there cannot be much mistake. Chemical 
 unions have been compared to marriages, and chemical 
 compounds to wedded pairs. If the comparison be accepted, 
 then the great majority of the mineral acids are monoga- 
 mists and wedded each to a single base ; but phosphoric acid, 
 like an Eastern patriarch, has the privilege if he pleases of 
 wedding three bases, although he is often satisfied with two, 
 and can cheerfully content himself with one. Or, to vary 
 the figure more expressively, the ordinary acids are like the 
 Hindoos under the domination of caste, and when hired as 
 servants stipulate to carry but one thing, and the minimum 
 weight of that. Phosphoric acid is an English servant of 
 all work, lifting three loads at a time, of any three things 
 that require to be lifted, and willing at all times to make 
 himself generally useful. 
 
 Putting all figure aside, we may affirm that no acid is 
 known to us, approaching to phosphoric acid in suscepti- 
 bility of various modification. Even if we were to suppose, 
 that as a hermit crab tries shell after shell till he finds one 
 to fit him, the living organism had made trial in turn of all 
 the mineral acids, we cannot imagine it finally selecting any 
 one but phosphoric acid. 
 
 For a knowledge of its remarkable properties we are 
 
1 42 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 chiefly indebted to Professor Graham, who was the first also 
 to suggest that its manifold variability specially qualified it 
 for being what I may term the organismal acid par excellence. 
 ' Phosphoric acid,' he observes, ' is one of the links by 
 which mineral and organic compounds are connected. And 
 it may be reasonably supposed that it is that pliancy of con- 
 stitution which peculiarly adapts the phosphoric above all 
 other mineral acids to the wants of the animal economy.' 1 
 He also illustrates this remarkable ' pliancy' by the conver- 
 sion which the hydrated metaphosphate of soda (Na O, 
 PO 5 -fHO) undergoes at 300 Fahr. into the pyro-phosphate 
 of soda and water (Na O, HO, + PO 5 ), remarking that its 
 conversion c exhibits a change of nature, without a change 
 of composition, such as often occurs in organic compounds, 
 but rarely admits of so satisfactory an explanation.' 2 
 
 I would add that the occurrence in plants of organic acids 
 which are polybasic, such as tartaric, citric, meconic, and 
 even, as it would seem, oxalic acid, points to the organis- 
 mal importance of polybasic acids throughout the living 
 kingdom, and suggests the probability of organic acids of 
 the same character occurring in animals, which our present 
 methods of analysis do not enable us to reach. The acids 
 of plants have not the pliancy of phosphoric acid, but seem 
 generally as tartaric acid (which is only bibasic, like pyro- 
 phosphoric acid) to be permanently non-monobasic in one 
 degree, but this lesser pliancy is in accordance with the 
 
 1 Elements of Chemistry , 2d edition, vol. i. p. 451. 
 
 2 Op. cit. p. 447. Lehmann has fully appreciated these conclusions, although 
 he hesitates to adopt them, observing that * it is almost self-evident that no salts of 
 any other acid could be so usefully applied in the metamorphosis of tissue, as those 
 of phosphoric acid, etc.' (Physiological Chemistry, Cav. Soc. Trans., vol. i. p. 440). 
 His work appeared in English in 1851, when I first became acquainted with it. 
 The statements in the text regarding phosphoric acid, I have in greater part taught 
 publicly in Edinburgh since 1840. 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 1 43 
 
 simpler chemical changes of vegetable organisms, nor is the 
 power of their organic acids small. Tartaric acid is much 
 more potent than pyro-phosphoric acid, and can transfer at 
 once two such powerful and related bases as potash and 
 soda, in the form of Rochelle salt, into plants. Its whole 
 series of two-based salts is a remarkable one. Oxalic acid 
 forms a not less varied class of so-called super-salts ; and 
 those of citric acid are many and singular also. It would 
 seem that a monobasic acid is too narrowly endowed and 
 one-sided to suit the constantly varying exigencies of a 
 plant. 
 
 Among the lower animals, as phosphoric acid disappears 
 from their skeletons, carbonic acid takes its place, but, as 
 we see in the shells of molluscous animals, consisting largely 
 of carbonate of lime, with the production of a substance 
 admitting of no such varied interstitial changes, as occur in 
 phosphatic skeletons. Yet carbonic acid is a much more 
 pliant acid than many, and has good, if not indisputable 
 claims to be counted bibasic : at all events it forms many 
 double salts. 1 
 
 And even in the lowest animals, where silica replaces 
 alike phosphate and carbonate of lime, serving alone to con- 
 stitute their skeletons and hard appendages, we encounter 
 a substance which is innocuous, soluble in water, forming 
 very peculiar hydrates, and susceptible of a gelatinous, an 
 amorphous, and a crystalline modification. It has thus the 
 conjoined mobility and stability which seem so essential to 
 organismal ingredients. Further, it has an almost unique 
 power of uniting at the same time with many bases, as we 
 
 1 Similar claims are advanced for sulphuric acid and cannot be disallowed ; but 
 it certainly is far less feebly bibasic than tartaric or pyro-phosphoric acid, even 
 though a sulphate of soda and potash can be formed ; and the acid bisulphate of 
 potash is as incompatible with animal organisms as slightly diluted oil of vitriol.- 
 
144 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 see in the silicates of the mineral kingdom, in glass and in 
 porcelain ; and this property may be turned to account in 
 furnishing sponges and others of the lower organisms with 
 the bases which contribute to their growth j 1 as these bases 
 conversely may be the media through which silica enters 
 the organism. 
 
 Such are some of the reasons which may be given in ex- 
 planation of the presence of phosphorus, and especially of 
 phosphoric acid, in the bodies of the higher animals, and in 
 that of man. The subject has been considered purely from 
 a chemist's point of view, without reference to any parti- 
 cular theory of life, or hypothesis regarding the existence or 
 sphere of a special vital force. For nothing is further from 
 my intention than to imply that such a knowledge of the 
 properties of the chemical elements as we can acquire in a 
 laboratory, is sufficient to explain their function as organis- 
 mal ingredients. It is but one of the data essential to the 
 solution of a most difficult problem ; but it is a most impor- 
 tant datum, and to the extent that the phenomena referred 
 to in the preceding pages are unquestionable physical truths, 
 they must receive full recognition in every coherent theory 
 of life. 
 
 It remains to discuss, from the same point of view, but 
 much more briefly, nitrogen and iron as organismal ele- 
 ments. 
 
 Nitrogen, or as it is otherwise called azote, which stands 
 at the greatest distance from phosphorus in the group which 
 includes both, is like its analogue, at once very fixed and 
 
 1 Since reaching this conclusion, I find that Mr. Graham without reference to 
 organic structures has suggested ' that silicic, like phosphoric acid, forms several 
 classes of salts.' (Elements of Chemistry , second edition, vol.5, p. 395.) This view 
 was not contemplated in the text, but would as well as that proposed, provide for 
 the transmission of bases and silica to silicious organisms. 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 145 
 
 very variable in properties, but in a way peculiar to itself. 
 Its free or uncombined state is its stable condition. So far 
 as we know, it has no allotropic modifications. In the one 
 shape, that of a permanent elastic fluid, in which it pre- 
 sents itself, it is astonishingly inert. Without taste, odour, 
 or colour, incombustible at ordinary temperatures, and not 
 supporting combustion, very slightly soluble in all liquids, 
 free from acidity and alkalinity, and not poisonous, it occu- 
 pies the same neutral or negative place among gases that 
 water does among liquids. It unites directly with no other 
 element at common temperatures, and with but one or two 
 at higher ones. This indifference to direct combination is 
 closely associated with its great elasticity as a gas. It is 
 probably, indeed, the body which presents the best example 
 of gaseity or gaseous elasticity. The only bodies which 
 can compare with it in this respect are oxygen and hydro- 
 gen, which, like it, have never been liquefied. But oxygen 
 is much more soluble than nitrogen in water and other 
 liquids, and directly unites with many bodies, so as to form 
 solid as well as liquid compounds, from which it is with 
 difficulty set free, and re-converted into an elastic fluid. 
 
 It does not appear that hydrogen is more soluble in 
 liquids than nitrogen ; but it unites directly with many 
 bodies, and forms both liquid and solid compounds which 
 are stable and enduring, so that it is mediately much more 
 liquefiable and solidifiable than nitrogen. 
 
 This pre-eminent elasticity as a gas peculiarly qualifies 
 it to serve the animal organism in its performance of the 
 great function of respiration. Indifferent to all other ele- 
 ments, it dilutes oxygen to a point compatible with its effect- 
 ing the needful slow combustion of the body, which, if un- 
 diluted, it would rapidly burn away. Gaseous nitrogen thus 
 goes the round of the circulation, taking no part in the 
 
 K 
 
146 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 changes to which the blood ministers, and after making the 
 * grand tour' as a seemingly unobservant traveller, returns 
 to the lungs and the atmosphere exactly as it left them. 1 
 
 But though free nitrogen will scarcely unite with a single 
 other free element, by indirect processes it can be made to 
 unite with nearly all the elements ; and the compounds 
 which it forms are among the most remarkable which the 
 chemist knows ; acids the most potent, such as nitric acid ; 
 alkalies the most powerful, of which ammonia is one among 
 a multitude ; dyes the most useful, such as indigo ; medi- 
 cines the most energetic, such as quinine ; poisons the most 
 deadly, such as prussic acid and strychnia ; besides endless 
 other substances, belonging to every category of chemical 
 compounds. 
 
 To the nitrogenous bodies as a class, belongs as a dis- 
 tinctive property the utmost readiness to undergo change, 
 and exactly because they contain an element indifferent to 
 change. Its great gaseous elasticity prevents it from en- 
 tering into combination, and its great tendency to recover 
 the gaseous form causes it readily to abandon its compounds. 
 As Gmelin expresses it, c Nitrogen has probably the great- 
 est affinity of all ponderable bodies for heat, with which it 
 constantly tends to form a gas. Consequently, many of its 
 compounds are decomposed by slight causes, with extreme 
 
 1 Nitrogen is not of less service to organisms as the chief constituent in weight 
 and bulk of the atmosphere, inasmuch as it diminishes the rapidity of combustion 
 and oxidation at the earth's surface j whilst as a great gaseous envelope which the 
 ocean and tributary waters cannot dissolve, and which neither acts injuriously on 
 rocks, plants, or animals, nor is altered in quality by them, it forms a permanent 
 medium for the production of winds, and a moderator and equalizer of the sidereal 
 light, heat, and other agencies determining climatic differences, such as no other 
 gas, simple or compound, known to us could be. But however important such 
 services are to the entire vegetable and animal world, they are rendered outside of 
 the organism, and cannot be added to the list of good qualities which belong to 
 nitrogen as an organismal element. 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 147 
 
 suddenness, the nitrogen being disengaged in the gaseous 
 form, and often producing the most violent explosions.' 1 
 
 One mode in which the characteristic longing of nitrogen 
 for freedom displays itself, is, as Gmelin implies, by con- 
 ferring explosiveness on its compounds. \ need only name 
 gunpowder ; the various bodies of which gun-cotton is the 
 type; percussion -cap powder, and the other fulminates; 
 the so-called ammoniuret of- gold ; and the chloride and 
 iodide of nitrogen. 
 
 In a greatly lessened degree, this chemical fragility and 
 instability are conferred by nitrogen upon the compounds 
 which it forms within living organisms* The immensely 
 greater and more numerous chemical changes which charac- 
 terize animals than plants, are essentially connected with 
 the much greater abundance of nitrogen in the former. 
 The difference between the slightly alterable, slowly com- 
 bustible vegetable cotton, a compound of carbon, hydrogen, 
 and oxygen, and the spontaneously decomposable, explosive 
 gun-cotton, which differs from it in quality of ingredients 
 by the addition of nitrogen, is typical of the distinction be- 
 tween the enduring non-nitrogenous vegetable compounds, 
 and the spontaneously changeable nitrogenous animal com^ 
 pounds ; although in this particular case the increase of 
 oxygen in the gun-cotton exaggerates the instability to the 
 point of explosiveness. 
 
 The fibrin, albumen, casein, and gelatine which form 
 the largest part of the muscles, the brain, the nerves, and 
 the soft portion of the bones, as well as of the non-aqueous 
 part of blood, milk, and the other animal fluids, contain 
 much nitrogen, and in the revolution of the circulation, 
 this gas is unceasingly availing itself of its power to become 
 free, to change those bodies in a multitude of ways. At 
 
 1 Handbook of Chemistry, Cav. Soc. Trans., vol. ii. p.. 373. 
 
148 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 all the glands, nitrogenous compounds are present, taking 
 active part in those mysterious processes by which the 
 blood is filtered, transmuted, re-created, and vitalized into 
 bodies unlike itself. During the germination of seeds, we 
 can trace the beginning of the process, as a cycle of chemical 
 changes, to the action of oxygen on nitrogenous substances, 
 which begin at once to change, and soon involve all the 
 non-nitrogenous compounds in change also. During the 
 fermentation and putrefaction of vegetable and animal sub- 
 stances, we find in like manner the alteration beginning 
 with a nitrogenous compound, which, though present in 
 minute quantity, commences an intestine disturbance des- 
 tined to proceed till everything is altered. Leaven is one 
 of the nitrogenous bodies, and it is sacredly proverbial that 
 a little leaven leavens the whole lump. The curdling of 
 milk by rennet is a similar phenomenon ; so also is digestion 
 in its first stage (which we can imitate artificially), as it 
 occurs in the stomach. The morbific matters which de- 
 velop diseases such as small-pox, are, so far as our limited 
 knowledge goes, nitrogenous compounds, and we have 
 reason to believe that their action in propagating disease 
 resembles that of the azotized body diastase (a modification 
 of albumen) in the germination of seeds, and of the albu- 
 minous yeast in fermenting sugar. The healthy phenomena 
 of secretion seem to be, in many respects, similar in charac- 
 ter ; a readily changeable nitrogenous compound in the pro- 
 cess of change, fermenting, as it were, the blood into milk, 
 tears, saliva, or the like. 
 
 It is not to be denied that we are quite unable to explain 
 why the fact of a nitrogenous body, undergoing decomposi- 
 tion in the neighbourhood of another, and it may be non- 
 nitrogenous body, should cause that other to decompose, 
 although it gives nothing to it, and takes nothing from it : 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 149 
 
 why, for example, sugar, a compound of carbon, hydrogen, 
 and oxygen, should change into alcohol and carbonic acid, 
 because vegetable albumen or yeast is changing side by side 
 with it into substances totally different. But we know that 
 the sugar, if alone, would not change, and that the albumen, 
 though alone, would change, and that when both are placed 
 together the change always begins with the albumen. Hence 
 whatever obscurities remain, we are certain of the great 
 changeableness of the nitrogen compounds, and of their 
 power to involve other compounds in great changes also. 
 It is thus that the mobility of nitrogen makes it pre- 
 eminently the modifier of the living organism. Like a 
 half-reclaimed gipsy from the wilds, it is ever seeking to be 
 free again, and, not content with its own freedom, is ever 
 tempting others not of gipsy blood to escape from thraldom. 
 Like a bird of strong beak and broad wing, whose proper 
 place is the sky, it opens the door of its aviary, and rouses 
 and flutters the other and more peaceful birds, till they fly 
 with it, although they soon part company. 
 
 Of all the elements, it is at first the least attractive to 
 the chemist ; but in the end no one rivets his attention 
 more. His early indifference to it is a tribute to its sta- 
 bility ; his lasting esteem for it is a tribute to its mobility. 
 Its twofold character is the measure of its organismal im- 
 portance. 
 
 The elements hitherto considered are all non-metallic, 
 but this sketch would be blameably imperfect if no organ- 
 ismal metal were referred to. And among the organismal 
 metals, iron is par excellence the metal, as certainly as it is, 
 by the testimony of ages, industrially the most excellent of 
 them all. All countries have honoured the smith, and he 
 would wonder more than he does at his own skill, if he 
 realized that the iron which he hammers is hammered not 
 
150 R eligio- Ch em hi. 
 
 merely by iron in his hand, but also by iron in his blood. 
 Yet the function of this iron is so little known, that, though 
 
 ' o 
 
 statistical men have calculated how many railroads might 
 be made out of the blood-iron of a generation of mankind, 
 the most acute and accomplished chemists tell us, to take 
 the words of one, that c we are unfortunately perfectly 
 ignorant regarding the special uses of iron in the animal 
 economy.' 1 And I have to turn to a poet to find a reason 
 why it is so useful. Alfred Tennyson, in his Princess, 
 makes the father of his heroine exclaim, when his stately 
 daughter shows no signs of relenting towards the wounded 
 prince, 
 
 ' I've heard that there is iron in the blood, 
 And I believe it.' 
 
 Old King Gama's final cause for iron in the blood was to 
 secure ' a steel temper' for those in whose veins it ran 
 largely. He would have promised the chemist a large per- 
 centage of ferric oxide from the blood of the Great Captain, 
 whom his countrymen loved to call the Iron Duke. This 
 is the only final cause I remember to have seen assigned for 
 blood being chalybeate. Perhaps the fine satire of the poet 
 may quicken us to discover others. 
 
 Iron is intermediate in properties between the very oxid- 
 able metals, such as potassium, and the very unoxidable 
 metals, such as gold. The former yield compounds too 
 fixed, the latter compounds too variable, for the necessities 
 of the living organism with its nicely-balanced affinities, 
 and its stable-unstable equilibrium. Far from either ex- 
 treme, iron belongs to a group including aluminium, chro- 
 mium, manganese, nickel, and cobalt; but it differs from 
 them all, and conjoins fixity and variability to an extent 
 which none of them do. 
 
 1 Lehmann's Physiological Chemistry, Cav. Soc. Trans. ; vol. i. p. 443. 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 1 5 1 
 
 Iron as a metal is readily crystallizable ; oxidable at ordi- 
 nary temperatures, even in mass ; peculiarly susceptible of 
 magnetization ; fusible only at a very high temperature ; 
 agglutinating, so as to admit of welding occurring at a 
 somewhat lower heat ; and possessed at the same, and at 
 higher temperatures, of a peculiar affinity for carbon. It 
 is further remarkable as admitting of a singular passive, as 
 well as an active electrical condition. Iron forms three 
 important compounds with oxygen, besides a fourth (ferric 
 acid), not requiring notice. The first, or protoxide, which 
 consists of i unit of metal to I of oxygen, is a powerful 
 base. The third, or peroxide, which consists of I unit of 
 metal to ij- of oxygen, is a weak base, and cannot unite 
 with carbonic acid. The second, which, as compared with 
 the first and third, is intermediate in composition, and also 
 in properties, especially so far as basic power is concerned, 
 is strikingly characterized by being magnetic, and is called 
 in consequence the magnetic oxide. Through these three 
 stages of oxidation, iron can rapidly pass backwards and 
 forwards, altering its basic and magnetic powers as it 
 changes. As peroxide, it has a remarkable attraction for 
 organic matter, familiarly exemplified by the difficulty ex- 
 perienced in removing iron-stains from linen, and turned to 
 excellent account by the dyer and calico-printer. This 
 property does not belong to the protoxide, but all the oxides 
 of iron resist precipitation from their salts by alkalies when 
 organic substances like sugar are present, in consequence, 
 apparently, of combining with them. 
 
 With the great majority of the non-metallic elements, 
 iron forms compounds similar to those which it forms with 
 oxygen. Among these are the remarkable combinations 
 with carbon, which confer upon cast-iron and steel their 
 valuable properties, and the curiously complex radicals with 
 
152 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 carbon and nitrogen (ferrocyanogen and ferridcyanogen), 
 which occur, for example, in prussian blue, where iron in 
 part acts as a metal, in part acts as a non-metal, as if it 
 replaced both the sodium and the chlorine of common salt. 
 
 In virtue of those properties, iron can accommodate itself 
 as few metals can, to the metamorphoses of the organism. 
 In the arterial blood full of oxygen, it can become a per- 
 oxide, cleaving like a dyer's mordant to the organic matter 
 of the corpuscles or blood-cells. In the venous blood, 
 containing little oxygen, it can become protoxide, perhaps 
 combining, as has been suggested, with carbonic acid. At 
 both sets of capillaries, it may, at the crisis of change of the 
 blood from venous to arterial, and from arterial to venous, 
 transiently become the intermediate magnetic oxide. In 
 one or other of those forms, or in similarly variable states 
 of combination with other elements than oxygen, it can 
 enter into the composition of the various solids and fluids 
 of the body in which it is found occurring, and perform, 
 as it does even in the inorganic ferrocyanides, exactly oppo- 
 site functions in neighbouring portions of the same tissue. 
 At the same time, its combinations are far removed from 
 the category of fragile chemical compounds ; even those 
 with organic substances, such as the dye-mordants, resist- 
 ing the decomposing action of powerful acids and alkalies. 
 
 Now, let the characters of iron which have been noted 
 be regarded simply as exponents of a conjoined mobility and 
 stability, without attaching any value to the particular modes 
 in which those characters are supposed above to be organ- 
 ismally serviceable, and let us see how far the metals most 
 resembling iron agree with it in such properties as the domi- 
 nant metal of the body must possess. Chromium has a 
 basic peroxide, and a strongly acid, extremely unstable, 
 higher oxide (chromic acid), but no protoxide or interme- 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 153 
 
 diate oxide. Practically it could occur in the body only as 
 the basic oxide, a substance having few affinities, for chro- 
 mic acid is rapidly destroyed by organic substances, and re- 
 acts destructively on them, so that it is not surprising that 
 its salts are poisonous. 
 
 Aluminium forms only a peroxide, alumina, so that it is 
 an unpliant, unaccommodating metal. Alumina, moreover 
 (the dyer's most useful mordant), has so excessive an attrac- 
 tion for organic matter, with which it forms insoluble com- 
 pounds, that it cannot take an active part in organismal 
 changes. In truth, when taken internally, it is prevented 
 by this precipitation in an insoluble form along with the 
 first organic substance which it encounters, from entering 
 the blood except in minute quantity, and it is not retained 
 there. 1 If, indeed, there is any justice in the statement 
 that bakers are in the habitual practice of adding alum to 
 bread, we must be continually swallowing alumina, yet none 
 is found in our blood. 
 
 Manganese as a metal is the very reverse of aluminium, 
 and too variable for the wants of the living economy. It 
 resembles iron, but has a wider range of affinities, and it is 
 very feebly magnetic. It oxidizes so rapidly in air, that it 
 can only be preserved in sealed tubes, or under liquids con- 
 taining no oxygen. In accordance with this oxidability, it 
 forms four non-acid oxides, three corresponding to those of 
 iron, but the fourth, or black oxide, having no analogue 
 among the iron-compounds ; and two acid oxides, one 
 manganic acid, corresponding to ferric acid, and like it very 
 unstable, the other permanganic acid, also, though in a less 
 degree, an unstable compound. This susceptibility of oxi- 
 dation in various degrees, which, moreover, implies a power 
 of uniting variously with other bodies than oxygen, appears 
 
 1 Lehmann's Physiological Chemistry, Cav. Soc. Trans., vol. i. p. 449. 
 
154 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 to unfit manganese for taking a prominent part as an organ- 
 ismal metal. It does occur in minute quantity in the ani- 
 mal body along with iron, as if to supplement it, but it is 
 more abundant in the spent tissues than in any of the fluids 
 that take part in the vital functions. 1 It appears indeed to 
 be hurried out of the system in virtue of the great mobility 
 of its compounds. 
 
 The two metals which most resemble iron are cobalt and 
 nickel. They produce oxides similar to those of iron, and 
 are strongly magnetic. Their affinity for oxygen, however, 
 is less than that of iron, for they remain untarnished where 
 iron rusts. They also dissolve more slowly than it in dilute 
 acids. Their higher oxides are not basic. Their peroxides 
 have not the stability of the peroxide of iron, nor, so far as 
 appears, do they possess the attraction for organic matter 
 which belongs to that body ; neither do they form a sharply 
 defined intermediate oxide, like the magnetic oxide of iron. 
 They would not then, if substituted for iron in the living 
 organism, equal it in power, nor do their properties appear 
 to suit the wants of the body better, or indeed so well as 
 those of iron do. Yet they resemble iron so much, that 
 we can well suppose conditions of the system, in which they 
 might be serviceable, and my colleague in the University, 
 Professor Simpson, has long been in the practice of adminis- 
 tering salts of nickel in those diseases which are accom- 
 panied by a deficiency of red globules in the blood. In such 
 cases iron is generally administered, and often with marked 
 utility, but sometimes it is of no service, and then nickel is 
 often beneficial. Dr. Simpson called my attention to this 
 fact more than two years ago, simply as an experiential re- 
 sult, and not as reached through any such theory as that 
 followed above. The fact is on this account the more iri- 
 
 1 Op. at. p. 448. 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 155 
 
 teresting to me, and my colleague's anticipation that the 
 blood, if rigidly analysed, will always be found to contain 
 nickel, may be confirmed ; although, on the other hand, it 
 is quite possible that there may be abnormal conditions of 
 the system, where a metal of the iron group may be more 
 useful than iron itself, not to the extent of its similarity, 
 but of its dissimilarity to that metal ; as manganese for 
 example, where the metamorphosis of tissues is too slow ; 
 aluminium where it is too swift. It may be thus that nickel, 
 as well as cobalt, proves serviceable as a tonic ; and in that 
 case we should not expect to find them among the normal 
 ingredients of the blood. 
 
 Iron, then, is a unique metal. We could replace it by 
 no other without a sacrifice of properties which are service- 
 able to the higher organisms. More than this it might 
 be unreasonable to affirm. But there is one feature of its 
 uniqueness which is worth a moment's further considera- 
 tion. Except nickel and cobalt, it is the only decidedly 
 magnetic metal, and it is more magnetic than they. It 
 must influence the body in virtue of its magnetism in away 
 no non-magnetic metal could, and its magnetic condition 
 must be continually altering. The patients of Reichenbach 
 may sometimes have deceived themselves, or him, or both, 
 when they declared that their sensations were different, 
 according as they lay along or across the magnetic meri- 
 dian ; but it is certain that the iron in our bodies must be 
 in a different magnetic condition in the opposite positions, 
 and it is reasonable to suppose that some persons may 
 be sensitive enough to appreciate the difference. At all 
 events, the observations of Faraday on the magnetic con- 
 dition of flesh and of living animals, demonstrate that the 
 organismal iron is magnetically active. We know also that 
 magnetism cannot be developed without a simultaneous 
 
156 Religio-Chemici* 
 
 development of electricity, so that magnetic changes in the 
 ferruginous blood and flesh must be accompanied by electri- 
 cal changes. Electricity also invariably develops magnet- 
 ism, and we know that electrical currents are constantly 
 traversing the muscles and other organs. Such currents 
 will react on the magnetic masses in their neighbourhood 
 and be reacted on by them, with a corresponding exaltation 
 of the intensity alike of the electricity and the magnetism. 
 
 Further, the peculiar force or polarity which acts along 
 the nerves resembles in many respects electrical and mag- 
 netic force. It is probable that all three forces or polarities 
 powerfully influence each other, and that the magnetizable 
 iron of the body is continually taking part in such reciprocal 
 actions. If, moreover, the iron in the blood-vessels, as 
 has been suggested previously, becomes magnetic oxide at 
 each half-revolution of the blood, it will be much more 
 magnetic at each of the great crises of the circulation than 
 at any other period. I feel at least assured that the mag- 
 netic qualities of iron are among its organismal virtues, and 
 that copper, for example, however suitable otherwise, could 
 never perfectly replace iron, inasmuch as it is devoid of all 
 but traces of magnetic power. 
 
 Such is an endeavour, most imperfect and inadequate, 
 to exemplify one mode in which we may hope to discover 
 why living creatures consist of certain chemical substances 
 rather than of others. I ask for an indulgent estimate of a 
 method of research in which I have scarcely a predecessor ; 
 but I submit to criticism examples of the method, because 
 I believe it to be logically free from objection. It only 
 assumes that whatever properties a chemical element pos- 
 sesses before its entrance into an organism, it retains after 
 its entrance. Thus, if iron be crystallizable, magnetizable, 
 electrifiable, oxidable in various degrees, and ready to unite 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 157 
 
 with organic matters of the body, I assume that it will con- 
 tinue to exhibit those properties within it, whatever may 
 be the additional properties which it manifests in virtue 
 of its being placed in such new conditions as can be realized 
 only in a living organism. When we examine substances 
 in a perfectly dark apartment we discern no colour in them, 
 but when we carry them with us into a lighted room, and 
 perceive the tints which they then display, we do not doubt 
 that they retain all the properties which they exhibited in 
 darkness ; and that these moreover are closely connected 
 with their assumption of colour when light falls upon them. 
 We make a similar but not less legitimate assumption, when 
 we take for granted that all the properties which exist in an 
 element when part of a dead mass, remain in it when part 
 of a living one. Such a mode of inquiry, accordingly, as I 
 have suggested, may be prosecuted equally well under the 
 guidance of almost any hypothesis, or theory of life, or with- 
 out hypothesis or theory at all. And it cannot fail to yield 
 important results. 
 
 The careful study of each of the chemical elements with 
 a view to ascertain why it is suitable or unsuitable to be- 
 come a component of a living organism, may often enable us 
 to anticipate physiological discoveries ; as, conversely, the 
 careful study of the molecular changes which occur in living 
 organisms, may enable us to anticipate chemical discoveries 
 in reference to inorganic bodies. 
 
 It has always seemed to me very remarkable that the 
 sciences which are mutually dependent, should so rarely be 
 found furnishing each other with principles which can be 
 used deductively as organons of discovery. The chemist, for 
 example, might have said to the physiologist, I find, from 
 my experiments on phosphoric acid and its salts, that it 
 is so unique in its conjoined mobility, stability, and manifold 
 
1 5 8 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 mutability, that I predict you will find it largely present 
 in organisms, and taking an active part in their most charac- 
 teristic metamorphoses. Or the physiologist might have 
 said to the chemist, I find this phosphoric acid so univer- 
 sally present in the organs of the living body, assisting in 
 functions so different, and accommodating itself to changes 
 of condition so great, that I am certain if you examine its 
 inorganic compounds, you will find them unlike those of 
 any other acid, much more numerous, and very dissimilar to 
 each other. 
 
 To take another example. The fact of but one set of 
 tubes being provided in our bodies to convey air to the 
 lungs and from the lungs, and the fact that gases, irrespec- 
 tive of chemical affinity and of difference in relative density, 
 rapidly intermingle and exchange places, stand in direct 
 connexion with each other. The natural philosopher 
 might have said to the physiologist, I find that a peculiar 
 diffusive force comes into play when unlike gases meet each 
 other, so that, in a way liquids cannot do, they exchange 
 places with great rapidity, and pass in opposite directions 
 along the narrowest tube. I predict, accordingly, that 
 though one set of vessels may be provided to carry blood to 
 the lungs, and another to carry blood from them, a single 
 set of tubes will be found all that is provided to carry air to 
 and from those organs, and one channel will prove to be 
 sufficient for inspiration and expiration. Or the physiologist 
 might have said to the physicist, I find living organisms in- 
 spiring and expiring through a single canal, which, more- 
 over, in many of them is a tube with rigid walls : there 
 must, therefore, be an unsuspected power of intermingling, 
 and exchanging places on the part of gases, which, if you 
 seek for, you will certainly find. The physiological and the 
 physical fact, however, were discovered independently. 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 
 
 "59 
 
 Occasionally we have seen one science assist another in 
 the way suggested. Thus the optician, especially after the 
 invention of the telescope and of spectacles, pressed upon 
 the attention of the physiologist that the living eye must 
 possess the power of adjusting its focus to the vision of 
 objects at different distances. And after some two centu- 
 ries of unsuccessful endeavours to solve the problem, but 
 not without the discovery of many important truths, in their 
 efforts at its solution, the physiologists of our own day have 
 within the last three years justified the optician by solving 
 the problem, and have added largely to the wealth of their 
 own science. 
 
 If there are few such cases, it only shows how much 
 more difficult it is to reason deductively than inductively, 
 and how very rarely man can look down from a point of 
 view, even faintly approximating to that at all times occu- 
 pied by God, and see a law go forth to its fulfilment. 
 
 And therefore before seeking to reach the last conclusion 
 to which our method of inquiry may lead us, I would pause 
 to notice the lesson which it teaches of humility and patience. 
 Kepler, the astronomer, when he could not convince his 
 contemporaries that the laws which he had announced as 
 presiding over the movements of the heavenly bodies did 
 actually exist, nobly consoled himself with the reflection 
 that if God had waited some six thousand years before He 
 could find one man to believe that He had impressed such 
 laws on the planets, Kepler might well wait one year before 
 blaming his fellow-men for not believing him. If God, in 
 like manner, has waited not thousands, but millions of years, 
 before a very few of His children have studied His works, 
 so as to learn, even most imperfectly, why He made them 
 and their pre-Adamic ancestors of one kind of dust, rather 
 than of another, we need not boast of the little we know, 
 
160 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 or angrily complain, because our small discoveries about 
 fluorine, or the like, do not seem to others quite so wonder- 
 ful as they do to ourselves. 
 
 With no desire, accordingly, to be dogmatic, or to press 
 for a verdict in favour of my conclusions, I refer to the 
 truths (in so far as they are truths) expounded in the pre- 
 ceding pages as illustrations , not demonstrations of final 
 causes. To a belief in these no man can compel another, 
 and I would not compel another even if I could. I blame 
 no man for disbelieving them ; but I should be glad to 
 secure for all, the happiness which faith in them begets. 
 The doctrine of final causes is at present in disrepute in 
 many scientific quarters, and this can neither be wondered 
 at, nor in many cases much condemned. There have been 
 so many unwise endeavours to sustain this doctrine, by 
 arguments of less than no value, that it has been unavoid- 
 ably discredited and despised. 
 
 All lovers of truth will join in protesting against making 
 a search for final causes, the chief object of scientific in- 
 quiry. We are certain to be misled if we do. There are 
 idols of the church, as dangerous as those idols of the den 
 or of the market-place against which Bacon so specially 
 warns us. But when guided by the Lumen Slccum, which 
 a desire for the simple truth supplies, we have patiently and 
 honestly reached a result, and then find our hearts swelling 
 with rapture at the wondrous example which it affords of 
 God's wisdom and power, we are traitors to ourselves and 
 to our Maker if we refuse adoration. 
 
 I believe that few honest intellects and hearts can come 
 face to face with such truths as I have most imperfectly 
 detailed in these pages, without in the beginning feeling a 
 great doubt of their reality, and in the end a great faith in 
 them ; and I know that, like St. Thomas of old, they will 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 1 6 1 
 
 first stand up, and thrust their fingers into the nail-marks on 
 the palms, and their hands into the hole in the side ; but by 
 and by they will kneel and say, ' My Lord and my God ! ' 
 If some are faithless, I will ask them to look at the Great 
 Panorama with beating hearts, as well as with eager eyes, 
 and I will simply sorrow for them if they think to measure 
 the universe by the intellect and the senses. I follow with 
 unbounded delight and gratitude, though it is at a long dis- 
 tance, the footsteps of the great Philosopher Humboldt, 
 when he goes before me round the vast Cosmos, and with 
 infant-like simplicity shows me every known feature of uni- 
 versal nature, without speculation on its purpose or cause. 
 But I have no sympathy with the Man Humboldt when he 
 tells me that our most reverent demeanour towards God, 
 is that of not pretending to discover purposes of one kind 
 or another in any of His works ; so that we should imitate 
 the ancient Egyptians who showed their special reverence for 
 Osiris by never naming him. The only attitude that befits 
 us as men, after traversing a mere fraction of the Cosmos, 
 is that of kneeling worshippers. 
 
 Nor need we be ashamed to be seen on our bended 
 knees, because Final Causes are so often foolishly dealt 
 with by their admirers. They always will be by a large 
 class. Few realize what the words Final Cause mean. To 
 demonstrate the full reason or entire Final Cause, why one 
 element, such as iron, exists in the body, would demand a 
 perfect acquaintance, not only with all the properties of 
 that element, but with all those of every other element 
 which is also present in the body ; besides an acquaintance 
 with much else : and how little do all the chemists of the 
 world know even of a single element ! 
 
 The sagacious old alchemist, Basil Valentine, in his 
 famous Currus Triumphalis Antlmonn^ in which he has 
 
 L 
 
1 6 2 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 triumphantly ridden down to the present day, and is likely 
 to ride for many a day to come, declares that ' no man 
 knows all the virtues of Antimony.' 1 With what astonish- 
 ment would Basil, if he could revisit the earth for half an 
 hour, hear of antimonious, antimonic, and metantimonic 
 acids ; of antimoniuretted hydrogen, penta-sulphide of anti- 
 mony, stibio-methyle, stibio-ethyle, and the like. The 
 coaches of his day did not differ more from the railway 
 carriages of ours, than his ' Currus Triumphalis ' does from 
 such a Triumphal Chariot of Antimony as Hofmann, if he 
 chose, could mount upon literary wheels at the present day. 
 Yet Hofmann would find no better motto to put upon the 
 panel of his chariot than Basil's words, c No man knows all 
 the virtues of Antimony,' and I may add, no man ever will ; 
 nor is the chemist better off in respect to other things than 
 he is in respect to Valentine's favourite metal. 
 
 What we call a final cause, is not God's final Cause, but 
 only that small corner of it which we can comprehend in our 
 widest glance. The fragmentary corner fills our intellects, 
 not because it is vast, but because they are small, and we 
 find how small they have made it, the moment we try to 
 make the fragment a measure of infinite wisdom. The 
 wisest of us is but a microscopic shell in the ocean of Om- 
 niscience, and when left on the shore with a drop of its 
 waters in our cup, we cannot reflect in its tiny mirror more 
 than a drop's worth of the meaning of the universe. And 
 yet we speak as if out of that drop the whole universe might 
 
 1 Basil's own words, as given in the quaint translation printed in London for 
 Dorman Newman at the King's Arms in the Poultry, 1678, run thus : ''Anti- 
 mony, like unto Mercury^ may fitly be compared to a round circle, of which there 
 is no end ; in which the more diligently any man seeks, the more he finds, if 
 process be made by him in a right way and due order. Yet the life of no one man 
 is sufficient for him to learn all the mysteries thereof? Basil Valentine, his triumphant 
 Cfiariot of Antimony, with Annotations nf Theodore Kirkringius, M.D. y p. iy. 
 
Chemical Final Causes. 1 63 
 
 arise ! Men of cold, logical intellect have so fully realized 
 this, that on all hands they remind students of science that 
 Bacon declared final causes to be sterile, comparing them 
 to nuns or vestal virgins dedicated to God. 1 
 
 I accept Bacon's statement, and still more his compari- 
 son. He is held by most who quote his famous condem- 
 nation of final causes to have pronounced them essentially 
 unfruitful ; but if he did not intend simply to signify that 
 they are unfruitful to man, he could not have chosen a com- 
 parison better fitted to signify an unfrukfulness which was 
 of extrinsic, not intrinsic origin. 
 
 Final causes are sterile, not merely like as, but for the 
 same reason as, the Vestal Virgins were, namely, because 
 they belong to God. These virgins, as well as others, might 
 have become mothers ; but no man dare wed them, for they 
 were God's Brides, Neither can any man mate with final 
 causes : they will bear no offspring to him. And exactly 
 for that reason are they the most perfect of earthly witnesses 
 
 1 ' Nam Causarum Finalium inquisitio sterilis est, et tanquam virgo Deo conse- 
 crata nihil parit.' De Augmentis Scientiarum, lib. iii. cap. v. Since writing the 
 text, I find that in the elaborate edition of Bacon's works, of which the first 
 volume has just issued from the press, under the editorship of Messrs. Spedding, 
 Ellis, and Heath, this passage is commented on as follows : ' No saying of Bacon's 
 has been more often quoted and misunderstood than this. Carrying out his divi- 
 sion of the Doctrina de Naturd, which, as we have seen, depends upon Aristotle's 
 quadripartite classification of causes, he remarks, that to Physica corresponds Me- 
 chanica, and to Metaphysica, Magia, But Metaphysica contains two parts, the 
 doctrine of forms and the doctrine of final causes. Bacon remarks that Magia cor- 
 responds to Metaphysica, inasmuch as the latter contains the doctrine of forms, 
 that of final causes admitting from its nature of no practical applications. * Nihil 
 parit,' means simply, ' non parit opera,' which, though it would have been a more 
 precise mode of expression, would have destroyed the appositeness of the illustra- 
 tion. No one who fairly considers the context can, I think, have any doubts as to 
 the limitation with which the sentence in question is to be taken. But it is often 
 the misfortune of a pointed saying to be quoted apart from any context, and, conse- 
 quently, to be misunderstood.' P. 571. 
 
164 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 to the being and perfections of God. Gentle, solemn, and 
 beautiful, they attract men, and modestly permit them to 
 look on their features ; but awe mingles with admiration in 
 the gazer's heart, and the ever-burning fires on the vestal 
 altar forbid all close or impious approach. Nevertheless, 
 we must seek after, and love final causes, even with a 
 lover's passion, although in this life they never can be ours. 
 An irresistible impulse compels us to cling to them. It 
 would be a proof of insanity if we were only mortals ; as 
 would also be that attempt to be omniscient, which is the 
 constant, though often unconscious aim of every student. 
 But both are the most natural and irrepressible instincts of 
 immortals, who look forward, through God's mercy, to all 
 eternity as their time of studentship, and to all His infinite- 
 ness as the object of their study. For such the contempla- 
 tion of final causes will never end, any more than it will 
 ever beget satiety. 
 
ROBERT BOYLE. 1 
 
 IT is reported of Thomas Carlyle that he once half- 
 jestingly declared his intention of writing a life of Charles 
 the Second, as one who was no sham or half man, but the 
 perfect specimen of a bad king. Charles, however, if he 
 did no other good thing, founded the Royal Society, and 
 by so doing saved his portrait from being cut out in un- 
 tinted black, by the stern humorist's scissors. 
 
 The thoughtless monarch, no doubt, did as little for 
 science as he well could. The only incident in his life 
 which can be referred to as indicating a personal interest 
 in it, is his sending the Society a recipe for the cure of 
 hydrophobia, but the act was probably prompted as much 
 by his love of dogs as his love of science. Sheer careless- 
 ness on his part appears to have been the cause of the 
 
 1 (l.) A History of the Royal Society, with Memoirs of the Presidents. By Charles 
 Richard Weld, Esq., Barrister-at-Law ; Assistant Secretary and Librarian to the 
 Royal Society. In 2 vols. London: John W. Parker, West Strand, 1848. 
 
 (2.) Occasional Refections . By the Hon. Robert Boyle. J. H. Parker, Oxford 
 and London, 1848. 
 
 (3.) Boyle Lectures for 1846. By Frederick Denison Maurice, M. A., Chaplain 
 of Lincoln's Inn, and Professor of Divinity in King's College, London. London : 
 John W. Parker, West Strand. Second Edition, 1848. 
 
 (4 ) A Sermon, Preached January 7, 1691-2, at the Funeral of the Hon. Robert 
 Boyle. By Gilbert Burnett, D.D. Edited by John Jebb, D.D., F.R.S., Bishop 
 of Limerick, Ardfert, and Aghadoe. London : James Duncan, 37, Paternoster 
 Row, 1833. 
 
j 6 6 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 Society's not obtaining confiscated lands in Ireland, which 
 he was willing it should possess, and which would have 
 ultimately yielded an ample revenue. The members be- 
 sought him for apartments where they might meet and 
 keep their library, curiosities, and apparatus. Charles at 
 last gave them a dilapidated college and grounds at Chelsea ; 
 but, characteristically enough, it turned out that the pro- 
 perty was only in part his to give ; and the Society, finding 
 it had inherited little else than a multitude of lawsuits, was 
 glad to restore the college to Government, and accept a 
 small sum in exchange. Yet Charles did more for science, 
 at a time too when royal patronage was a precious thing, 
 than many wiser and better monarchs have done, and it 
 would be difficult to discover any sinister or interested 
 motive which the King had in assisting the philosophers. 
 He probably did not pretend (except in the Society's char- 
 ters, which in all likelihood he never read) to revere science 
 as Truth, or covet it as Power, but he could wonder at it 
 as Marvellous. It dealt in novelties, and he was too in- 
 telligent and inquisitive not to be struck by them. It 
 helped him through a morning, to attend on occasion ' an 
 anatomical administration' at Gresham College, and see 
 an executed criminal dissected. From time to time also, 
 the members of the Royal Society showed him their more 
 curious experiments, and Charles first smiled approbation, 
 and then generally found something to laugh at, either in 
 the experiment or the experimenter. It occasioned him 
 no little diversion, as we learn from Pepys, to witness the 
 philosophers c weighing of ayre.' He had too strong and 
 practised a sense of the ludicrous not to be keenly alive to 
 the little pedantries and formalities of some of the fellows ; 
 and too little reverence in his nature to deny himself a 
 laugh at their weakness and follies. He was sometimes, 
 
Robert Boyle. 167 
 
 no doubt, entitled to his smile at the experimenter ; and 
 always, if he saw fit, at the experiment. For everything 
 on this earth has its ludicrous as well as its serious aspect, 
 and the grave man need not grudge the merry man his 
 smile at what he thinks strange. 
 
 An experiment, too, was a thing on the result of which 
 a bet could be laid, as well as on the issue of a game at 
 cards or a cock-fight. The Royal Society was, on one 
 occasion, instructed that ' his Majesty had wagered 50 to 
 5 for the compression of air by water.' 1 A trial, accord- 
 ingly, was made by one of its most distinguished members, 
 and the King, as may be surmised, won his wager. 2 
 
 It is impossible to read the histories and eulogies of the 
 Royal Society, without detecting in them, in spite of all 
 their laudations of its kingly founder, a subdued but irre- 
 pressible conviction, that by no address of the annalist can 
 Charles II. be made to figure as an august patron and pro- 
 moter of science. It is not that he will not brook com- 
 parison with such princes as Leo x., or the Florentine 
 Dukes. Charles could not be expected to equal them, 
 but he took such pains to show that he had the progress 
 of science as little at heart as the maintenance of personal 
 virtue, or public morality, that he has baffled the most 
 adroit royalist to say much in his praise. He was often 
 expected at the public meetings of the Society, but he 
 never accomplished an official visit. He dreaded, no 
 doubt, the formality and tediousness of the seance^ and his 
 presence might have recalled the caustic proverb, c Is Saul 
 too among the prophets ?' 
 
 Nevertheless, it might have fallen to the Royal Society's 
 lot to have had a worse founder. Its seeds were sown, 
 and had even germinated in the days of James I., but the 
 
 1 Weld, vol. i. p. 231. * Rid. p. 232. 
 
1 6 8 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 philosophers were fortunate in escaping the patronage of 
 the most learned of the Stuarts. James would have plagued 
 them as much as Frederick the Great did the savans he 
 favoured. His sacred Majesty would have dictated to the 
 wisest of them what they should discover, and how they 
 should discover it. A wayward genius like Hooke would 
 have paid many a visit to the Tower, or one to Tower 
 Hill ; and any refractory philosopher who persisted in in- 
 terpreting a phenomenon otherwise than the royal pedant 
 thought he should interpret it, would have been summarily 
 reminded of the ' King's divine right to rule,' and treated 
 as a disloyal subject. 
 
 Charles I., we can well believe, looked on with un- 
 assumed interest at Harvey's dissection of the deer's heart, 
 and demonstration of his great discovery of the circulation 
 of the blood. Whatever that monarch's faults may have 
 been, he had too religious a spirit not to have honoured 
 science, and too kingly a manner to have insulted its 
 students. But his patronage would have compromised 
 the liberties and lives of the philosophers during the 
 civil war, and we should grudge now if the perversest 
 cavalier among them had paid with his life for his scien- 
 tific royalism. 
 
 The uncrowned king that followed the first Charles, had 
 his hands too full of work, and his head and heart too much 
 occupied with very different things, to have much patience 
 with weighers of air, or makers of ' solid glass bubbles.' * 
 But a hint that they could have helped him to a recipe for 
 c keeping his powder dry,' or improved the build of his 
 ships, or the practice of navigation, would at once have 
 secured the favour of the sagacious Protector. When the 
 Restoration came, however, such services to Cromwell 
 
 1 ' Rupert's Drops,' Weld, vol. i. pp. 103, 113. 
 
Robert Boyle. 169 
 
 would have procured for the philosophers a swift and 
 bloody reward. 
 
 Things fell out, as it was, for the best. The infant 
 Society escaped the dangerous favours of King and Protec- 
 tor, till the notice of royalty could only serve it : and then it 
 received just as much of courtly favour as preserved it from 
 becoming the prey of knavish hatchers of sham plots, and 
 other disturbers of its peace~; and so little of substantial 
 assistance that its self-reliance and independence were not 
 forfeited in the smallest. Charles the Second did the 
 Royal Society the immense service of leaving it to itself, 
 and an institution numbering among its members such men 
 as Newton, Boyle, and Hooke (to mention no others), 
 needed only security from interruption, and could dispense 
 with other favours. And it had to dispense with them. 
 The title of the Society is apt to convey the impression that 
 it had the Government to lean upon, and was dowered 
 from its treasury. But this was not the case. The Society 
 was not fondled into greatness by royal nursing. Charles's 
 only bona fide gift to it, was what Bishop Horsley, in an 
 angry mood, denounced as ' that toy,' the famous bauble 
 mace, which the original warrant for its making, calls ' one 
 guilt mace of one hundred and fifty oz.' 2 
 
 In return for this benefaction the Society presented their 
 patron with a succession of remarkable discoveries and in- 
 ventions, which told directly on the commercial prosperity 
 of his kingdom. The art, above all others the most im- 
 portant to this country, navigation, owes its present per- 
 fection in great part to the experiments on the weight of the 
 air, and on the rise and fall of the barometer, to the im- 
 provements in time-keepers, and the astronomical dis- 
 coveries and observations, which Boyle, Hooke, Newton, 
 
 1 Weld, vol. ii. p. 168. 2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 163. 
 
1 7 o R eligio- Chemici. 
 
 and other members of the Royal Society made during 
 Charles the Second's reign. The one hundred and fifty 
 ounces of silver gilt were returned to the treasury in his 
 lifetime. 
 
 In exchange for the regal title which they received, the 
 Society made the monarch's reign memorable by the great 
 discoveries which signalized that era, and under his nomi- 
 nal leadership won for him the only honourable conquests 
 which can be connected with his name. Estimated in 
 coin, or in honour, given and received, the king stands 
 more indebted to the Society than the Society to him. 
 
 We will not, however, strive to lessen Charles's merit. 
 The gift of the mace, c bauble' though it was, may be ac- 
 counted a sincere expression of goodwill. It probably 
 appeared to the donor an act of self-denial to let so much 
 bullion of the realm go past the profligates of both sexes, 
 who emptied his pockets so much faster than he could fill 
 them ; and the deed may pass for a liberal one. We will- 
 ingly make the most of it. Charles the Second's reign is, 
 from first to last, such a soiled and blotted page, that we 
 are thankful for one small spot, which, like the happy 
 ancients, we can mark with white. CAROLUS SECUNDUS 
 REX, we think of with contempt, and loathing or indigna- 
 tion ; but Charles Stuart, F.R.S., meant on the whole well, 
 and did some little good in his day. 
 
 Charles's connexion with the Royal Society, however, is 
 a small matter in its history. He was its latest name-giver, 
 not its founder. If any single person can claim that honour, 
 it is Lord Bacon, who, by the specific suggestions in his 
 New Atlantis, but also, and we believe still more, by the 
 whole tenor of his Novum Organum^ and other works on 
 science, showed his countrymen how much can be done 
 for its furtherance, by the co-operation of many labourers. 
 
Robert Boyle. 171 
 
 But even Bacon must share the honour with others ; 
 learned societies are not kingdoms which the monarchs 
 of intellect found ; but republics, which grow out of the 
 common sympathies of many minds. Fraternity is the rule, 
 though not equality, and there is no prating about liberty, 
 for it is enjoyed by all. 
 
 A Bacon or a Descartes does not act on his fellows like 
 a great magnet attracting to itself all the congenial metal 
 within its range. A brotherhood grows as a crystal does. 
 Particle seeks out like particle, and the atoms aggregate 
 into a symmetrical whole. The crystal, when completed, 
 has not the same properties in every part, but it is not the 
 presence of a peculiarly endowed molecule at the centre, or 
 the summit, that occasions the difference. 
 
 It seems a vain thing, accordingly, to insist on singling 
 out individuals, however gifted, as the founders of learned 
 ' bodies/ The very title we apply to them might show us 
 the folly of it. ' The body is not one member, but many.' 
 It was not the brain that produced it, nor the heart, although 
 it may be true that these were first and fullest developed, 
 and were essential to the knitting together of the weaker 
 and less vital members. 
 
 The association of gifted men, which afterwards became 
 the Royal Society, rose into being simultaneously with many 
 similar institutions in other parts of Europe. These were 
 not copies of each other, but originated in the kindred sym- 
 pathies of their several founders. Why such societies 
 should have sprung up in the seventeenth century, and not 
 earlier, or later, is a question not to be answered by any re- 
 ference to any single cause. It will not solve the problem, 
 to say that Bacon was born at a certain epoch, or Galileo, 
 or Newton. The birth of those and other great men, is as 
 much part of the phenomenon to be explained, as the ex- 
 
172 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 planation of it. Neither will the invention of printing, nor 
 the outburst of the Reformation, supply more than a part 
 of the rationale. What we have to account for is this : 
 Mankind stood for ages, with closed eyelids, before the 
 magnificence of un-ideal nature, or opened them only to 
 gaze at her with the eyes of poets, painters, and- mystics. 
 They saw wondrous visions, and clothed nature with 
 splendid vestments, which they wove for her. All at once 
 they bethought themselves, that the robes which God had 
 flung over the nakedness of the material world, might be 
 worth looking at, and might prove a more glorious apparel 
 than the ideal garments which man's imagination had 
 fashioned for the universe. 
 
 The sleep of centuries was broken in a day. The first 
 glances at the outer world were so delightful, that the eye 
 was not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing. 
 Men longed to extend their grasp beyond the reach of the 
 unassisted senses. Within a few years of each other, the 
 telescope, the microscope, the thermometer, the barometer, 
 the air-pump, the diving-bell, and other instruments of re- 
 search, were invented and brought to no inconsiderable 
 perfection. The air, the earth, the sea, the sky, were 
 gauged and measured, weighed, tested, and analysed. The 
 world had been satisfied for hundreds of years with the one 
 half of the Hebrew monarch's proverb, c It is the glory of 
 God to conceal a thing.' The verse was now read to the 
 end, c but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.' 
 
 The searching out of the willingly-divulged secrets of 
 nature was not delayed till the seventeenth century, be- 
 cause none but Bacons, Newtons, Galileos, Descartes, and 
 Pascals were competent to the task. We need not ask 
 whether men of as ample, or exactly the same gifts, had 
 preceded those great ones. It is certain that men with 
 
Robert Boyle. 173 
 
 endowments, liberal enough to have discovered much, if 
 not all, that has been left for us and our immediate fore- 
 fathers to find out, adorned even the darkest epoch of the 
 earlier ages. Among the astrologers arid alchemists were 
 men of such rare genius, that, if by some choice anaesthetic 
 they could have been flung into a trance, and kept plea- 
 santly dreaming of ' the joy of Jupiter,' and the elixir of 
 life, till the present time, they would awake to dispute the 
 palm with our Herschels and Faradays. We will attempt 
 no other explanation of the sudden, universal, and catholic 
 recognition of the interest and importance of physical science, 
 which characterized the seventeenth century, than this, 
 that mankind, as a whole, is possessed of a progressive 
 intellectual life, which, like organic life, is marked at inter- 
 vals by sudden crises of permanent expansion. The seed 
 shoots forth the germ ; the petals blow into the flower ; 
 the chrysalis bursts into the butterfly. The boy starts into 
 the youth ; his thoughts are elevated, his desires changed ; 
 and so the whole race, in a brief interval of time, is lifted 
 to a higher intellectual level, and its speculations directed 
 into new channels. 
 
 The aloe buds, thorns, and leaves only for ninety-nine 
 years, and we have to wait till the hundredth comes, before 
 the flower blooms. The flower is not an accident of the 
 hundredth year, but its complement and crown. Had the 
 thorns not protected the leaves, and the leaves elaborated 
 the juices during the ninety-nine barren years, the century 
 would not have been crowned by the flower. Yet why the 
 aloe blooms in its hundredth rather than in its fiftieth or its 
 tenth year, is not explained by this acknowledgment. 
 
 The contest between Charles the First and the English 
 people, was contemporaneous with an aloe-flowering of the 
 genius of the nations of Europe. It was no accident or 
 
174 # dig i- Che mid. 
 
 mere result of a certain century having arrived. The 
 printing-press, and the Reformation, the births of great 
 men, and much else, were its thorns and leaves, and wide- 
 spread supporting roots ; but we cannot say, therefore^ the 
 revolution in men's scientific tastes occurred after 1600, 
 rather than after 1500 or 1700, any more than we can 
 demonstrate that 1848 was the necessary arid infallible year 
 for the overturning of the thrones of Europe. 
 
 The Royal Society was one of the choicest buds of this 
 blossoming of the European intellect. Its beginnings were 
 some two hundred years ago, about 1645, when 'divers 
 ingenious persons ' met weekly in London, to make expe- 
 riments and discuss the truths they taught. ' We barred/ 
 says Dr. Wallis, one of their members, ' all discourses of 
 divinity, of state affairs, and of news, other than what con- 
 cerned our business of philosophy/ 
 
 About the year 1648-49, some of their company removed 
 to Oxford, upon which the Society, like a polypus, divided 
 itself into two. The one half, provided with a new tail, 
 remained in London, the other, furnished with a new head, 
 throve at Oxford. It was afterwards matter of dispute 
 which was the better half, but we need not discuss the 
 question. The halves came together in London, arid after 
 Charles the Second's return, ' were, about the beginning of 
 the year 1662, by his Majesty's grace and favour, incorpo- 
 rated by the name of the Royal Society.' It had no fixed 
 title before its incorporation. Boyle spoke of it as the 
 ' Invisible College.' Evelyn wrote of it as a ' Philosophic 
 Mathematic College.' Cowley called it the c Philosophical 
 Colledge.' Only sickly infants are christened in haste. It 
 was an earnest of the Royal Society's longevity that it had 
 long been weaned, and was out of leading-strings, before it 
 was named. 
 
Robert Boyle. 175 
 
 Four histories of the Society have been published. We 
 have placed at the head of our article the title of the last 
 and best. It is a pleasant volume, which all classes of our 
 readers may peruse with interest. Mr. Weld's position, as 
 Assistant-Secretary of the Royal Society, has given him 
 unrestrained access to its archives, so that he has always 
 been able to refer at first hand to original and authentic 
 documents. His duties bring him in contact with our most 
 distinguished men of science, whom he has had the constant 
 opportunity of consulting on the many difficult scientific 
 questions he has had to discuss. Himself an accomplished 
 barrister, he weighs conflicting evidence with the nice dis- 
 crimination of an enlightened lawyer and impartial judge ; 
 and making no pretensions to the title of philosopher, he 
 estimates the merits of scientific men without any of the 
 bias which attaches to their estimate of each other. His 
 point of view is that of a literary man interested in the pro- 
 gress of science, but having no personal stake in the solu- 
 tion of its problems, or the award of its honours. Four 
 years have been spent by Mr. Weld in preparing his work, 
 which has cost him much tedious ransacking of the trea- 
 sures of the British Museum, Bodleian Library, State Paper 
 and Lord Chamberlain's Office, as well as the Collections 
 of the Royal Society. His time and labour have not been 
 thrown away. New light is cast, by his researches, on 
 many epochs in the Society's history, which we had thought 
 destined to remain for ever in impenetrable obscurity. Short 
 Lives of all the Presidents are given, written on the whole 
 pleasantly, and relieved from stiffness by characteristic anec- 
 dotes. Famous Fellows, though not Presidents, come in 
 for a share of Mr. Weld's biographical notices ; and as the 
 History approaches our own times, the interest of the work 
 in this respect greatly increases. The author's zeal, indus- 
 
1 7 6 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 try, and discrimination, have enabled him to enrich his work 
 with curious unpublished particulars concerning Sir Joseph 
 Banks, Franklin, Priestley, Rumford, Watt, Cavendish, 
 Young, Wollaston, Davy, Herschel, Faraday, which will 
 prove of no little value to the biographers of these great men. 
 
 Few sources of information have been neglected by 
 Mr. Weld. This Journal has not been overlooked, and 
 here we have to find our only fault with our author. In 
 the sketch which he has given of Dr. Wollaston, he has 
 availed himself freely of a notice of that philosopher which 
 appeared in this Review, 1 and has referred to certain of 
 its judgments with approval. Mr. Weld, however, has 
 failed, and that designedly, to mention from what work he' 
 quoted. At first we thought that the statement on the 
 title-page of the ' History of the Royal Society,' that it is 
 ' compiled from authentic documents,' might be intended to 
 exclude, as unauthoritative, the anonymous articles of a 
 periodical journal. But Mr. Weld is above this affectation. 
 He invariably acknowledges his obligations to some other 
 sources of this description, when information is borrowed 
 from their pages. The same justice should have been shown 
 to us. If our opinions were worth quotation and adoption, 
 their source was worth acknowledging. When the official 
 representative of our greatest scientific society is deliberately 
 guilty of plagiarism from our pages, we cannot wonder that 
 minor appropriators steal from us without blushing. 
 
 We cannot leave Mr. Weld's volumes without remind- 
 ing our readers that the ' History of the Royal Society' is 
 a part of the History of the Empire. For nearly two hun- 
 dred years it has gathered together one great division of the 
 highest intellects of the nation, and given unity and a prac- 
 
 1 British Quarterly Review, No. vn. p. 8 1. The sketch of Wollaston re- 
 ferred to, is that which comes next in order in this volume. 
 
Robert Boyle. 177 
 
 tical aim to their labours. All its doings have not been 
 wise, or its works fruitful. But its errors have been singu- 
 larly few, and its most abstract, and apparently visionary 
 occupations have, in the great majority of cases, been 
 found, in the end, ministering to the welfare of all men. 
 It has expanded the intellect of the whole people ; been 
 the true, though sometimes unconscious and generally dis- 
 trusted ally of Religion ; and the faithful, though too often 
 unthanked servant of Government, which it has .aided and 
 guided in increasing the commercial and political greatness 
 of the country. 
 
 The Society will never be thanked as it deserves for its 
 direct services to the empire, much less for its indirect ones. 
 It is not that men are unthankful, but that they are slow 
 to perceive that there is occasion for thanks, and they are 
 blind to their true benefactors. Rarely does a scientific 
 inquiry like Davy's ' Researches on Flame,' bud, blossom, 
 and bear fruit, like Aaron's rod, in a single night, and show 
 forth, on the morrow, a Safety Lamp, the value of which 
 men hasten to acknowledge by cheques on their bankers, 
 and a service of plate to Sir Humphry. In general, one 
 man sows and another reaps ; the acorn is planted in this 
 age, and the oak felled in the next. The seed-time is for- 
 gotten before the harvest comes. Too often, also, while 
 the sower was a very wise man, the reaper is only a very 
 needy or greedy one. He puts a money value on the grain, 
 which the public pays, and cries quits. It would be diffi- 
 cult to extort from many a London or Liverpool shipowner 
 an acknowledgment that the Royal Society did him a service 
 by persuading Government to spend a round sum of money 
 in sending out vessels to observe the transit of Venus over 
 the sun's disk. It would be still more difficult to persuade 
 him that he owed thanks to the astronomers of Charles the 
 
 M 
 
1 7 8 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 Second's reign, for watching, night after night, the immer- 
 sions and emersions of Jupiter's moons; that Dr. Robert 
 Hooke was his benefactor, by experimenting upon the pro- 
 perties of spiral springs, and Dr. Gowan Knight by making 
 artificial magnets. The shipowner furnishes his captains 
 with Nautical Almanacs, chronometers, and compasses, and 
 thanks no one. The bookseller and instrument-maker have 
 got their own price for their goods. Business-men do not 
 thank one another when value is given for value. All 
 London has been out gaping at the new electric light. It 
 has gone home with dazzled eyes, not to meditate statues to 
 Volta, or Davy, or Faraday, but to reflect that the light is 
 patent, and must be paid for, and to consider the propriety 
 of disposing of its shares in the gas companies, and retiring 
 from the oil and tallow trade. 
 
 We do not make these remarks complainingly. Scientific 
 men have, at present, a fair share of the sympathy and 
 gratitude of their unscientific brethren, and are every day 
 receiving fuller and more kindly acknowledgment of the 
 value of their services. 
 
 Whilst we are writing, Mr. Macaulay's eloquent recog- 
 nition of the debt of gratitude which the nation owes the 
 Royal Society has appeared, to wipe away its reproach 
 among the ignorant. He must be an exacting man of 
 science who is not satisfied with the graceful tribute to 
 the worth of his labours which a great literary man has so 
 willingly paid. 
 
 We have spoken of the past glories of the Royal Society, 
 but though its history has been four, we may say, five 
 times written, it has not become an historical thing. It 
 never ranked a greater number of men of genius among its 
 Fellows than it does at present, and we trust that the time 
 is far distant when the Society shall end with the name with 
 
Robert Boyle. 179 
 
 which it began, and become, in sad earnest, the Invisible 
 College. 
 
 Three of the earliest members of the Royal Society dis- 
 tinguished themselves from the other Fellows by the in- 
 numerable additions which they made to natural knowledge, 
 or, as we should now call it, physical science. These were 
 Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke, and Robert Boyle. The 
 last is to be the special object of our further remarks. In 
 genius he was the least of the three, but to be least in that 
 triad was to be great among ordinary men. He comes be- 
 fore his greater brethren in point of time. He was older 
 than Newton by fifteen years, and older than Hooke by 
 nine. Newton wrote to Boyle as to a grave and reverend 
 senior, and Hooke, who in early life was his experimental 
 assistant, displayed to his old master a love and esteem such 
 as he exhibited to no other philosopher. It was long ago 
 observed that Boyle was born in the year in which Bacon 
 died, and it soon appeared that a corner, at least, of the 
 deceased prophet's mantle had fallen upon him. He was 
 the earliest pupil who applied, in practice, the lessons of 
 the Novum Organum ; the oldest, though not the greatest 
 of the Marshals, who won for himself a kingdom, by fol- 
 lowing the rules of conquest laid down by the Imperial 
 Verulam. As the patriarch, therefore, of English experi- 
 mental science, he takes precedence even of Newton. 
 
 It is in this capacity that we propose chiefly to treat of 
 Boyle. He was too memorable a man, however, in other 
 respects, not to require his whole character to be sketched, 
 though it can be only in outline. Many excellent bio- 
 graphies of him have appeared, but no recent English 
 writer has given an analysis of his scientific researches, so 
 that a good purpose may be served by giving an abstract of 
 certain of the more important of them, with an estimate 
 
180 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 of their value, as examined by the light of a science, much 
 of which is two centuries older than that of Boyle's time. 
 He is eminent as a discoverer in chemistry, heat, pneu- 
 matics, hydrostatics, and various other branches of physics 
 proper. He was one of the great improvers of two of the 
 most important instruments used in scientific researches 
 the air-pump and the thermometer. He was a zealous 
 naturalist ; an active medical practitioner, and so good a 
 theologian and excellent a Christian, that Lord Clarendon 
 would gladly have assured him of a mitre, could he have 
 persuaded him to enter the church. In all those respects 
 we shall have something to say of him, but it is of Boyle 
 the philosopher we have chiefly to speak. 
 
 The Honourable Robert Boyle was the seventh and 
 youngest son of Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, known 
 in his day as the Great Earl, so remarkable had been his 
 rise from a lowly station to the possession of great wealth 
 and dignities. He landed in Dublin to seek his fortunes 
 in 1588, the penniless and untitled younger son of a younger 
 brother; and in 1632 he was entitled to style himself ' Sir 
 Richard Boyle, Knt., Lord Boyle, Baron of Youghall, 
 Lord Dungarvan, Earl of Cork, Lord High Treasurer of 
 Ireland,' etc. etc. He had ample wealth also to support 
 his titles. Through prudence, good management, and 
 friends at court, he procured grants and favourable bargains 
 of confiscated Irish estates, and his wealth enabled him to 
 purchase property in England, so that he ultimately became 
 one of the largest landed proprietors in the empire. His 
 greatness is now almost entirely forgotten, or remembered 
 only in connexion with the more enduring fame of his sons, 
 Roger (Lord Broghill, afterwards Earl of Orrery), and the 
 subject of our sketch. The Earl's name deserves to be 
 connected with those of his children. He was an upright, 
 
Robert Boyle. 1 8 1 
 
 estimable man, and a kind considerate father. Boyle was 
 indebted to him for a most liberal education, and for the 
 fortune which enabled him to devote himself to science. 
 
 The particulars of Boyle's early years have been chro- 
 nicled in a curious autobiography, in which he speaks of 
 himself in the third person, under the assumed name of 
 Philaretus. As it acquaints us with the chief particulars 
 of his life nearly up to the period when he commenced his 
 scientific researches, we shall go briefly through its personal 
 revelations, before saying anything concerning his labours 
 as a discoverer in physics. 
 
 Boyle was born at his father's country seat of Lismore, in 
 Munster, on the 25th day of January, 1626 (o.s.) 1 The 
 Earl of Cork, as his son tells us, ' had a perfect aversion for 
 their fondness who used to breed up their children so nice 
 and tenderly, that a hot sun, or a good shower of rain, as 
 much endangers them as if they were made of butter or of 
 sugar.' As soon, therefore, as the baby Philaretus ' was 
 able, without danger, to support the incommodities of a 
 remove,' he was sent to a country nurse, and inured to plain 
 fare and homely ways. Boyle thought he profited much 
 by this regimen, though to appearance, in after life, he did 
 little credit to his country nursing, for he was a sickly vale- 
 tudinarian all his days. Yet as he nearly made out the 
 allotted three-score years and ten, in spite of several sharp 
 illnesses, and much swallowing of his own physic, it is likely 
 that he owed something to his rustic cradle. 
 
 Before he could appreciate the greatness of the calamity, 
 which, however, he reckoned amongst the chief misfortunes 
 of his life, he lost his mother, a woman of a free and noble 
 
 1 The Biographia Britannka says February, and gives authorities for its state- 
 ment. Boyle's father says January. (Earl of Cork's * True Remembrances,' 
 printed in Introduction to Birch's Life of Boyle.} 
 
1 8 2 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 spirit, and rich in the possession of many virtues. Some of 
 the more glaring defects which marred his intellect in man- 
 hood, may be traced indirectly to this misfortune. The 
 widowed Earl transferred the love he had felt for the mother 
 to the motherless boy, whose sweet disposition was not al- 
 together proof against the injurious effects of his father's 
 double love. Philaretus dwells with a natural complacency 
 on the fondness felt for him by the * good old Earl ;' and 
 moralizes in his own fashion on the causes of it. He refers 
 it partly to his being, like Benjamin and Joseph, the son of 
 the Earl's old age ; partly to a likeness observed in him 
 ' both to his father's body and his mind,' but chiefly, as he 
 cynically enough conjectures, c to his never having lived 
 with his father to an age that might much tempt him to run 
 in debt, and take such other courses to provoke his dislike, 
 as in his elder children he severely disrelished.' The evil 
 result of this indulgence may be surmised. Boyle got a great 
 deal too much of his own way. He was, what is emphati- 
 cally called, a ' spoiled child.' His studies and his masters 
 were often changed. He went through no systematic or 
 severe scholastic or academic training, but roved in a desul- 
 tory way over the whole field of knowledge. He had a 
 quick, versatile intellect, but he was not a deep thinker ; so 
 he learned many things, but none profoundly. His Auto- 
 biography and his voluminous works, show him to have 
 been, in all things but religion, an amateur from the cradle 
 to the grave. Boyle confessed in after life to being much 
 afflicted with a ' roving wildness of wandering thoughts,' 
 which he amusingly and unreasonably imputed to his having 
 been allowed, when a schoolboy, during convalescence from 
 sickness, to read Amadis de Gaule^ and other fabulous and 
 wandering stories. He sought to cure the evil by ' the 
 extraction of the square and cube roots,' which he found the 
 
Robert Boyle. 183 
 
 most effectual remedy for his ' volatile fancy.' The cure 
 was an exceedingly imperfect one, for few productions of 
 able men exhibit less of logical method, orderly arrange- 
 ment, and terse condensation, than Boyle's works, although 
 they are not wanting in clearness or graphic power. In last 
 century Johnson affirmed, that many talked of Boyle, and 
 praised him, but that nobody read his books ; nor have the 
 readers increased since Johnson's time. The tide is now 
 setting in in favour of reprints, and Boyle has not been 
 overlooked. His Occasional Reflections have been re-issued, 
 with what result we shall see. 
 
 Boyle, however, was no ordinary amateur. He displayed, 
 while yet very young, a precocity of intellect, and a gravity 
 and even melancholy rare in a child ; he showed, what is 
 still rarer in children, especially spoiled children, a regard 
 for truth, which was proof against every temptation. He 
 never told a lie. 
 
 Having learned before he was eight years old to write a 
 fair hand, and to speak French and Latin, he was sent in 
 his ninth year to Eton College, where he remained nearly 
 four years, and was allowed many indulgences. His aptness 
 and willingness to learn procured for him here the special 
 attention of one of the masters, Mr. Harrison, who in- 
 structed him privately and familiarly in his chamber, in ' an 
 affable, kind, and gentle way.' This kindly teaching acting 
 on a genial disposition, awoke in the eager boy a passionate 
 desire for learning. Like many other great readers, he re- 
 ferred his love of books to the study of a single remarkable 
 one in early life. The volume in this case was Quintus 
 Curtius, the accidental perusal of which, at Eton, ' first 
 made him in love with other than pedantick books, and 
 conjured up in him that unsatisfied appetite of knowledge 
 that is yet as greedy as when it was first raised.' Boyle, 
 
184 R eligio- Chemici. 
 
 we may be certain, mistook the nature, though not perhaps 
 the extent of the influence of Quintus Curtius upon him. 
 The c Faery Queen' did not make Cowley a poet, but only 
 revealed to him that he was one. Had the unsatisfied appe- 
 tite of knowledge not existed in Boyle's mind, before he fell 
 in with Quintus Curtius, Quintus would never have been 
 read. It did not beget the love it seemed to create, but 
 only made its reader fully conscious of a passion that had 
 long and silently been growing up within him. From that 
 moment, however, it burned with a double glow. 
 
 A schoolboy's journal cannot be expected to record many 
 incidents which shall seem memorable to others. We select 
 from Philaretus' school life only such particulars as throw 
 light on the tastes and labours of his manhood. Passing 
 over, therefore, the recital of several narrow escapes from 
 death, we halt for a moment at a tedious account of his life 
 being perilled, whilst at Eton, by an emetic administered to 
 him in place of a refreshing drink. The mistake was owing 
 to an apothecary, and Boyle was more frightened than hurt. 
 It gave him, however, a dislike to mediciners of all degrees. 
 He pungently remarks, that c this accident made him long 
 after apprehend more from the physicians than the disease, 
 and was possibly the occasion that made him afterwards so 
 inquisitively apply himself to the study of physic, that he 
 might have the less need of them that profess it.' When he 
 became his own master, accordingly, he dosed himself, and 
 was, like most other amateur doctors, a very unhesitating 
 practitioner. 
 
 Soon after this came a journey to London to interrupt his 
 desultory studies, a tertian ague to interrupt them still fur- 
 ther, and, worst of all, the reading of Amadls de Gaule, 
 already referred to, which, if Boyle's hypothesis were true, 
 gave so incurable a bias to his roving fancy. Scarcely had 
 
Robert Boyle. 185 
 
 he recovered from the ague before his father arrived in Eng- 
 land, and Boyle went to visit him. The old Earl soon 
 found that he loved his favourite child too much to part 
 with him again. He was taken from Eton accordingly, and 
 resided with his father at Stalbridge, a country seat in Dor- 
 setshire, which Boyle afterwards inherited. The latter had 
 contrived, during his last year at Eton, to forget most of the 
 Latin he had learned, in consequence of ' the change of his 
 old courteous schoolmaster for a new rigid fellow.' 
 
 At Stalbridge, after a time, he was sent to reside with 
 an old divine, the parson of the place, who instructed him 
 c both with care and civility.' Under his teaching he re- 
 covered his Latin, wrote French and English verses, ' and 
 began' (which is not very credible) ' to be no dull proficient 
 in the poetic strain.' He burned his verses when he came 
 of age, because, countryman though he was of Shakspere 
 and Spenser, and contemporary of Milton, he held that 
 ' English verses could not be certain of a lasting applause, 
 the changes of our language being so great and sudden, that 
 the rarest poems within few years will pass for obsolete.' 
 It would have been well if the unwise prophet had enter- 
 tained the same fear of the enduringness of English prose, 
 especially his own, and had spared posterity one, at least, 
 of his five folio volumes. 
 
 A fresh change of masters now occurred. Boyle passed 
 from the hands of the old divine to the care of M. Mar- 
 combes, an accomplished Frenchman ; a shrewd, cynical 
 man of the world, of the better sort ; a soldier and a 
 traveller, but not a profound scholar. With him Boyle 
 spent a summer, reading the Universal History, and in 
 conversation in French ' equally diverting and instructive, 
 which was as well consonant to the humour of his tutor as 
 his own.' We can imagine how the congenial tutor and 
 
i 8 6 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 pupil got through the day. Monsieur Marcombes, who 
 had the superintendence of Boyle's studies for several years, 
 did his duties faithfully, but the lake could not rise higher 
 than the fountain. An accomplished amateur himself, he 
 made Boyle one ; and teacher and scholar were content to 
 be amateurs. 
 
 Their busy idleness was, for a season, exchanged for 
 unpretending playing. The Earl of Cork, who was a great 
 encourager of early marriages in his family, concluded a 
 match, in the autumn of 1638, between his sixth son, 
 Francis, a lad of eighteen, and a step-daughter of Sir 
 Thomas Stafford, one of Queen Henrietta's maids of 
 honour. Boyle accompanied his brother to London, where 
 he was sent, in terms of the foregone conclusion, to pay 
 his addresses to the lady. The suit prospered ; the times 
 were too unsettled for long courtships or protracted wedding 
 ceremonies. The parties, after a short acquaintance, were 
 publicly married at court, in the presence of Charles the 
 First and his consort ; and four days after the wedding, 
 'the bridegroom extremely afflicted 7 the bride being left 
 behind and his unsympathizing brother greatly delighted, 
 were c commanded away to France.' They kissed their 
 Majesties' hands ; set sail on one of the last days of 
 October 1638 ; and ' a prosperous puff of wind did safely, 
 by the next morning, blow them into France.' 
 
 Their stay on the Continent was much longer than either 
 the exiled bridegroom or Boyle anticipated or intended. 
 Accompanied by M. Marcombes, the brothers travelled 
 rapidly through Normandy, visited Rouen, Paris, and 
 Lyons, and settled for a season at Geneva. Here Boyle 
 studied, with little relish, logic and rhetoric, but was ' ena- 
 moured of those delightful studies, arithmetic, geometry 
 with its subordinates, the doctrine of the sphere, that of the 
 
Robert Boyle. 187 
 
 globe, and fortification.' He also took lessons in fencing 
 and dancing, and liked the first as much as he hated the 
 last. He amused himself with ' mall, tennis (a sport he 
 ever passionately loved), and, above all, the reading of 
 romances.* 
 
 This brings us to the end of 1640, and brings Boyle to 
 his fourteenth year. It marks an important era in his 
 personal history the crisis of a great change in his spiritual 
 nature which he afterwards spoke of as the most impor- 
 tant event in his life. We pass it by unnoticed at present, 
 as a consideration of Boyle's mere intellectual qualities will, 
 on the whole, furnish us with sufficient means for estimat- 
 ing his merits as a man of science. 
 
 In 1641, Boyle left Geneva on a tour through the north 
 of Italy, visiting, among other places, Verona, Padua, Bo- 
 logna, Ferrara, Venice, and Florence. At Florence, he 
 resided for a winter, studying ' the new paradoxes of the 
 great star-gazer Galileo,' who died in the neighbourhood 
 of the city whilst Boyle and his brother were there. After 
 a short stay at Rome, they bent their way homewards, 
 and arrived at Marseilles in the spring of 1642, intending 
 immediately to return to England. Instead of bills of ex- 
 change, however, to enable them to complete their jour- 
 ney, they found letters from their father announcing the 
 breaking out of the general rebellion in Ireland of 1641. 
 The Earl of Cork immediately raised troops, put them 
 under the command of his elder sons, and maintained the 
 soldiers at his own charge. He was a punctual paymaster ; 
 and so completely were his available funds swallowed up 
 by the demands of his troopers, that, although a few years 
 before he had allowed his second son, Richard (Lord Dun- 
 garvan), a thousand pounds a year whilst on his travels, he 
 could now with great difficulty send his two younger sons 
 
1 8 8 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 two hundred and fifty pounds to bring them home. This 
 pittance, however, never reached them. The agent in 
 London to whom the remittance was intrusted proved un- 
 faithful to his trust, and the disappointed young men had to 
 return to Geneva, and become dependants on M. Mar- 
 combes' bounty. Here, such was the distraction of affairs 
 in Great Britain, they waited in vain for nearly two years 
 the arrival of supplies from England ; till, despairing of 
 relief, they contrived, by raising money on some jewels in 
 their possession, to reach their native country about the 
 middle of the year 1644. Boyle found his father dead, and 
 himself left heir to what in the end proved an ample estate ; 
 but, at the period of his arrival in England, its value was 
 nominal, and he could scarcely venture to call it his own. 
 Everything was in confusion. He scarcely knew whither 
 to turn, and was on the eve of joining the royalist army, 
 when, by a fortunate accident, he fell in with his sister 
 Catherine, Lady Ranelagh, with whom he resided for some 
 months in London. A strong attachment, which lasted 
 through life, subsisted between Boyle and his sister, who was 
 twelve years his senior. She was a lady of great genius, 
 courage, and piety, and is dear to every lover of letters, as 
 having ministered to the comforts of Milton's old age. Be- 
 sides her sisterly care of Boyle, and the happy influence she 
 exerted upon his disposition, she was able to render him an 
 important service in his worldly affairs. The majority of 
 her relations were Royalists, but she was connected by mar- 
 riage with some of the chiefs of the Parliamentary party ; 
 and, during the civil war, her interest was sufficient to 
 secure her brother's Irish and English estates from confisca- 
 tion or spoliation. 
 
 Boyle returned for a short time to the Continent in 1645, 
 to arrange his pecuniary affairs ; and it is not till 1646 
 
Robert Boyle. 189 
 
 (o. s.), or a little more than two hundred years ago, that, 
 at the age of twenty, he began his scientific researches. 
 His collected works, including his Life and Correspondence, 
 occupy six large, closely-printed folio volumes. These 
 have been edited by Dr. Thomas Birch, and will be referred 
 to as c Birch's Boyle :' the edition intended is that of 1772. 
 His scientific papers alone occupy three formidable quartos, 
 after having been largely abridged by Dr. Peter Shaw. 
 The abridgment we shall distinguish as ' Shaw's Boyle : ' 
 the edition referred to is that of 1738. 
 
 It would be vain to attempt a systematic or chronologi- 
 cal analysis of works so voluminous as those referred to. 
 We must, with our limited space, be content to show what 
 Boyle has done to extend pneumatics, and, more briefly, 
 what he has achieved for chemistry, heat, natural history, 
 and medicine. We select the subjects that have been least 
 referred to in previous expositions of Boyle's labours, and 
 of those we shall dwell chiefly on the first. Were we to 
 attempt to discuss them all, we could only glance cursorily 
 at each. Any one of Boyle's entire scientific investigations 
 would equally well illustrate his intellectual qualities, and 
 exhibit his modes of procedure as a physical inquirer. 
 Chemistry was, on the whole, his favourite science, and 
 would furnish the amplest illustration of his character as a 
 philosopher. His merits and defects, however, as a chemist 
 have been pretty fully canvassed and acknowledged, and the 
 additions he made to the recorded facts of chemistry secure 
 him a place in the history of that science. A late distin- 
 guished professor, indeed, guiltless of any purpose of jesting 
 or playing upon words, once gravely summed up the me- 
 morabilia of Boyle's history in the singular epitome, that he 
 was ' the son of the Earl of Cork and the father of modern 
 chemistry.' He was the Mentor, however, rather than the 
 
190 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 Ulysses of the chemistry of the seventeenth century, and 
 neither made so many discoveries as many individuals among 
 his successors have accomplished, nor showed the genius 
 that they have displayed in bringing to light new pheno- 
 mena and laws. He was more the critic and corrector of 
 the false chemistry of his time than the leader of a new 
 era. When he had overthrown the old science, and had 
 cleared a space for a truer and nobler chemistry, he helped 
 to lay the foundations of the new edifice. But he was so 
 much occupied in preventing unwise architects from re- 
 building the tottering walls he had pulled down, that he 
 could do little himself towards forwarding the stately erec- 
 tions that should replace them, but supply materials for 
 succeeding wise master-builders. His name, accordingly, 
 occurs rarely in modern treatises on chemistry, much more 
 rarely than in works on natural philosophy. Phosphorus, 
 which he first introduced to the notice of English philoso- 
 phers, but did not discover, has shed its radiance round his 
 name for a century and a half, and has lighted it down to 
 the present day. In addition to this, a certain noisome 
 volatile compound of sulphur, hydrogen, and nitrogen, 
 called of old c the fuming liquor of Mr. Boyle,' still con- 
 tinues at times to offer up its sorry incense to his memory. 
 But otherwise, his name is rarely referred to, except by 
 professed historians of chemistry. 
 
 In natural philosophy, however, he retains, and will re- 
 tain, a high place as an observer, especially in reference to 
 pneumatics. The first to construct and employ an air-pump 
 in England, a very little after the earliest air-pump had been 
 constructed in Germany, his name is inseparably connected 
 with a department of knowledge, which, dealing with the 
 properties of the atmosphere, is indissolubly interwoven 
 with every one of the physical sciences. We shall not, 
 
Robert Boyle. 191 
 
 therefore, convey to the reader a false impression of the 
 kind of reputation which Boyle possesses at the present day, 
 if we refer to him as a natural philosopher, rather than as a 
 chemist, although, did our limits permit, we should endea- 
 vour to show that he has done more for chemistry than 
 most of his successors give him credit for. It would be a 
 vain task, however, to condense six goodly folios into a few 
 pages, and we have this additional reason, and it is our chief 
 one for selecting Boyle's pneumatics as the example of his 
 scientific researches, that the early history of the air-pump 
 in England has fallen into great and unaccountable confusion. 
 The confusion is everyday increasing, and cannot be reme- 
 died too speedily, so that a service will be rendered to pre- 
 sent, as well as to past, science if we remove it. The 
 subject, accordingly, is discussed somewhat fully in what 
 follows. 
 
 Pneumatics as a science was little known to the ancients. 
 An instrument corresponding to a very indifferent air-pump 
 was constructed by Hero of Alexandria, in which an imper- 
 fect vacuum could be produced by sucking out the air from 
 the interior of a vessel by means of the mouth. The Alex- 
 andrian air-pump may be seen, at the present day, in the 
 hands of our nursery-maids who never heard of Hero or 
 Alexandria. Children are amused by having a thimble or a 
 nutshell made to cling to the skin, after the air has been 
 withdrawn from it by the action of the lips and cheeks. 
 The thimble or the nutshell vacuum is as perfect as Hero's 
 can have been, and the mode of its production is probably 
 as clearly apprehended in the nursery as it was in Hero's 
 time, and for ages after. The Greeks and Romans had no 
 air-pumps not, however, because they had not sufficient 
 ingenuity to devise and construct them, for they used pumps 
 to raise water, and an air-pump, though the cause of its 
 
1^2 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 efficiency in emptying a cavity of its contents is different, 
 is merely a water-pump employed to withdraw air instead of 
 water from a vessel. A false philosophy had taught them 
 that nature abhorred a vacuum, so that a void was non- 
 existent and impossible, and those who had no faith in the 
 possibility of a vacuum were as little likely to try to produce 
 one, as the scientific mechanicians of our day are likely to 
 employ their ingenuity in endeavouring to realize perpetual 
 motion. The world universally doubted or disbelieved that 
 such a thing as literal emptiness could exist, till in the early 
 half of the seventeenth century, Galileo's celebrated pupil 
 Torricelli, demonstrated that it could. Nature may be 
 truly said to abhor a vacuum, but she does not forbid one. 
 A void is difficult to produce, and still more difficult to 
 preserve. Absolute emptiness has perhaps never been 
 realized, but a very near approach to it has been made, and 
 the void may be retained for a long, though not perhaps for 
 an indefinite, period. Torricelli's vacuum, which exists in 
 the upper part of every barometer, was produced by filling 
 with quicksilver a glass tube, shut at one end, and more 
 than thirty inches in length. The open end was then 
 closed with the finger, and the tube was inverted, and 
 plunged with its mouth downwards below the surface of 
 quicksilver contained in a basin. The finger was then 
 withdrawn, the quicksilver immediately retreated from the 
 closed extremity of the tube, which was held perpendicu- 
 larly, and sank till it left a column of the liquid metal some 
 thirty inches long. If the tube employed were three feet 
 in length, a space six inches long would thus be abandoned 
 by the mercury. This space, if the experiment were pro- 
 perly performed, was in winter as nearly as possible, a per- 
 fect vacuum. In summer, it contained a little of the vapour 
 of mercury. In 1654, ten years after the Torricellian 
 
Robert Boyle. 193 
 
 vacuum had been first produced, the famous consul of Mag- 
 deburg, Otto von Guericke, remarkable as the inventor of 
 the electric machine, as well as the air-pump, was led to the 
 conclusion, whilst reflecting on Torricelli's experiment, that 
 air in virtue of its elasticity would expand when relieved 
 from pressure, and continue to abandon a hollow vessel 
 connected with a pump put in action, till the vessel should 
 become ultimately vacuous. After some preliminary trials, 
 accordingly, of another kind, he connected a glass globe full 
 of air, with a syringe or pump, exactly identical in construc- 
 tion with one of the forms of the ordinary lift, or sucking 
 pump, and found that by setting the piston in motion he 
 could empty the globe of air. He proceeded to make a 
 number of interesting experiments, which added largely to 
 men's knowledge of the properties of air, and have made 
 his name and the city of his residence famous in every quar- 
 ter of the civilized world. So many were the visitors that 
 crowded to Guericke's house to witness his marvellous per- 
 formances, that he had a large pump erected in his cellar, 
 with tubes ascending into an upper room, and connected 
 with suitable apparatus. At great receptions, the pump 
 was driven all day by two men who kept emptying a very 
 large copper globe of air. When an experiment was to be 
 made, a communication was opened between this globe and 
 the interior of much smaller vessels, the air contained in 
 which was immediately greatly rarefied, and their cavities 
 left nearly vacuous. Were this the proper place, we should 
 have much to say in praise of Otto von Guericke. 
 
 The fame of the Magdeburg experiments soon reached 
 England, and interested no one there so much as Boyle. 
 He had been meditating, like Guericke, on Torricelli's re- 
 sults, and was considering how best a vacuum might be 
 produced on the large scale, when he learned that he had 
 
194 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 been anticipated. He would probably have succeeded in 
 his schemes, and the likelihood of this, along with the cer- 
 tainty that Boyle had endeavoured to construct an air-pump 
 before 1659, nas ^ tne ^ ate Professor Robison, the writer of 
 the able article in the Encyclopedia Britannica, on Pneuma- 
 tics, to claim for Boyle the merit of being an independent, 
 though not the first, inventor of the air-pump. ' Boyle,' he 
 says, c invented his air-pump, and was not indebted for it to 
 Schottus's account of Otto von Guericke's, published in the 
 Mechanica Hydraulo-Pneumatica of Schottus, in 1657, as ne 
 asserts, Technica Citriosa.' 1 This is complimenting Boyle at 
 Guericke's expense, in an uncalled-for way. The former, 
 who was eminently free from envy, meanness, or jealousy, 
 explicitly declares in a letter to his nephew, Lord Dungar- 
 van, of date 1659, that he did not set about the construc- 
 tion of an air-pump till he had heard of Guericke's c way of 
 emptying glass vessels, by sucking out the air at the mouth 
 of the vessel.' Encouraged by the report of Guericke's 
 success, Boyle called in the assistance of Greatorex, or 
 Gratorix, a well-known instrument-maker of the time, fre- 
 quently referred to in Pepys' Diary. Between them, how- 
 ever, they could not succeed in fashioning a serviceable 
 machine, and Boyle had recourse to Robert Hooke, then a 
 youth of some three-and-twenty, but already remarkable 
 for his mechanical genius. No drawing of Greatorex's con- 
 trivance has been preserved, but Hooke, who had seen it, 
 says of it, in his cutting way, that it ' was too gross to per- 
 form any great matter.' 
 
 At this point, the history of the air-pump in England 
 begins. Statements, the most erroneous and contradictory, 
 occur in the works of writers of the highest authority, nor 
 do we know any treatise which gives an accurate account 
 
 1 Encyclopaedia Eritanmca^ yth edition, Art. Pneumatics, p. 72. 
 
Robert Boyle. 195 
 
 of the steps in the invention and improvement of the ma- 
 chine, or which rightly marks the parties by whom they 
 were made. 
 
 Men so eminent as Dr. Thomas Young and Professor 
 Baden Powell, have misled authorities of less esteem in this 
 matter. Professor Robison, in addition to other mistakes, 
 in his ' Treatise on Pneumatics,' 1 attributes one most im- 
 portant improvement (the double barrel), in one place to 
 Hooke, and in another place to Hauksbee. Mr. Weld has 
 completed the confusion, by announcing in his history, that 
 the Royal Society has in its possession an ancient air-pump, 
 once the property of Boyle, which is totally unlike any in- 
 strument figured or described in his works. It is time to 
 set this matter to rights, and it may be well to remind the 
 reader that, although the air-pump was invented in Ger- 
 many, nearly all its great improvements have been made in 
 England. 
 
 Greatorex's contrivance having been thrown aside, Hooke 
 constructed for Boyle, in 1658 or 1659, tne air-pump with 
 which his first series of pneumatic researches was made. 
 The merit of devising this instrument should seem to be 
 almost entirely Hooke's. Boyle at least claims very little 
 to himself. His account of his first air-pump is contained 
 in his treatise, entitled, ' New Experiments, Physico- 
 Mechanical, touching the spring of the Air and its effects, 
 made, for the most part, in a new Pneumatical Engine ; 
 written by way of Letter to the Right Honourable Charles, 
 Lord Viscount of Dungarvan, eldest son to the Earl of 
 Corke.' The date of the letter is 1659. It is reprinted in 
 Birch's Boyle, vol. i. Boyle mentions that he put both 
 Mr. G. (Greatorex) and R. Hooke to contrive an air-pump, 
 which should be more manageable than the German one, 
 
 1 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Art. Pneumatics. 
 
1 96 Rel'igw-Chemici. 
 
 and free from its defects ; and then adds, c After an unsuc- 
 cessful trial or two, of ways proposed by others, the last 
 named person (R. Hooke) fitted me with a pump, anon to 
 be described.' 1 In a manuscript which was not published 
 till after his death, Hooke himself says, ' In 1658 or 9 
 I contrived and perfected the air-pump for Mr. Boyle.' 2 
 
 This instrument consisted c of two principal parts, a glass 
 vessel, and a pump to draw the air out of it.' The pump 
 was so placed on a wooden tripod, as to have its mouth 
 downwards, so that the piston-rod, or shank of the sucker, 
 when, like the ramrod of a musket, it was pushed home, 
 ascended into the cylinder or barrel. The object of this 
 inversion was to allow the glass vessel, from which it 
 emptied the air, to be placed in a vertical position above 
 the pump. This glass vessel Boyle called the receiver, an 
 apparently paradoxical title for a hollow globe, which was, 
 if possible, to be emptied of its original contents, atmo- 
 spheric air. The name, however, which is still retained, 
 though modern air-pump receivers are differently con- 
 structed, was eminently significant, and marked an impor- 
 tant difference between Boyle's air-pump and Otto von 
 Guericke's. 
 
 The receiver was a globe, or rather pear-shaped vessel, 
 with a large aperture at its wider upper end, provided with 
 an air-tight, moveable cover. Through this aperture the 
 vessel could be made to receive any object, such as a burn- 
 ing candle, or a living animal, on which it was intended to 
 try the effects of a vacuum. The hollow stalk of the pear- 
 shaped receiver terminated in a brass tube, provided with a 
 stop-cock, and ground to fit into the upper end of the in- 
 verted cylinder. The latter had an opening in it close to 
 the place where the stop-cock entered, which could be 
 
 1 Birch's Boyle, vol. i. p. 7. 2 Waller's Life of Hooke, p. 3. 
 
Robert Boyle. 197 
 
 closed or opened by a brass plug, ground to fit it, and 
 managed by the hand of the experimenter, or the worker 
 of the pump. The piston, which had no aperture or valve 
 in it, was not moved directly by the hand. The piston-rod 
 had teeth cut on it at one side, so as to form a rack, which 
 was raised or depressed by a handle acting on a pinion or 
 toothed wheel, working into the teeth of the rack, as in the 
 air-pumps of the present day. We shall not dwell more 
 minutely on the peculiarities of the original English air- 
 pump. An engraving of it will be found at the end of the 
 first volume of Birch's Boyle, and in the second volume 
 of Shaw's Boyle, p. 472. It was necessary to describe it 
 somewhat minutely, for a reason which will presently 
 appear. The most important points to be noticed about 
 it are, that unlike any later air-pump, the cylinder and the 
 receiver were directly connected, and, further, that it was 
 provided with only one barrel or pump. It appears to have 
 been partly in reference to the former of those peculiarities, 
 but also because he did not pretend to be able to produce 
 an absolute vacuum, that Boyle named his instrument. 
 He seldom calls it an air-pump. Once he speaks of 
 Guericke's instrument as 'the wind-pump, as somebody 
 not improperly calls it.' ' Pneumatic pump ' also but 
 rarely occurs. The title he preferred for his instrument 
 was that of ' pneumatical engine.' Others called it the 
 c rarefying engine,' and it was known over Europe as 
 Machina Boyleana, Boyle's machine. 
 
 It was strictly a pneumatical, not a rarefying engine. It 
 could be used to condense air into the globular receiver, 
 as well as to withdraw air from it, as Boyle showed, and 
 was thus something else than a mere vacuum -producer. 
 Vapours and gases could also be introduced into the globe, 
 as they were, in many of the experiments made with 
 
198 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 it. It was thus best denominated an air or pneumatical 
 engine. 
 
 At the present day, it would be considered an awkwardly 
 contrived, ill-proportioned, and imperfect instrument. It 
 taught Boyle, however, and his contemporaries so much, 
 achieved such wonders, was so difficult of construction, 
 and so costly, that its possessor called it his ' Great' Pneu- 
 matical Engine. He did not retain it long in his posses- 
 sion. With a rare and noble liberality, he presented it to 
 the Royal Society in 1662, so that his poorer scientific 
 brethren, who could not afford so expensive a piece of 
 apparatus, might study pneumatics at his cost, and multiply 
 experiments by means of the great engine. Acts as liberal 
 have been done by many men on their death-beds, but 
 seldom during their life-time ; and wealthy philosophers 
 have rarely descended from the height of advantage their 
 riches gave them, to put into poor men's hands the means 
 of rivalling and outstripping them in their favourite pur- 
 suits. 
 
 For six or seven years Boyle turned aside from Pneu- 
 matic research altogether, and no one took his place, at 
 least in Great Britain. Finding that few new experiments 
 had been made in the course of many years, he resumed 
 his inquiries into the properties of the air, and began by 
 constructing a new air-pump. His account of this, which 
 he distinguishes as his ' Second Engine,' and of the experi- 
 ments which he made with it, was published in the shape 
 of a letter to his nephew, Lord Dungarvan, entitled c A 
 Continuation of New Experiments, Physico-Mechanical, 
 touching the Spring and weight of the air, etc. etc. Ox- 
 ford, 1669.' The letter is dated March 24, 1667, which 
 we may consider the year in which the second English air- 
 pump was constructed, though it may have been finished 
 
Robert Boyle. 1 99 
 
 in the preceding year. Various considerations ' invited 
 me/ says Boyle, ' to make some alterations in the struc- 
 ture, some of them suggested by others (especially the in- 
 genious Mr. Hooke), and some that I added myself, as 
 finding that without them I could not do my work.' 
 
 The second pneumatical engine, like the first, had a single 
 barrel, but the mouth of the latter, from which the piston- 
 rod projected, was turned upwards, and the barrel stood in 
 a wooden box, or trough, filled with water, which rose 
 above the mouth of the cylinder, so that the latter was en- 
 tirely under water. The object of this arrangement was to 
 keep the leather of the piston, or sucker, always wet, and, 
 as a consequence, c turgid and plump,' so that it should 
 move air-tight in the barrel. The piston, which was 
 moved by a rack and pinion, had an aperture in it, which 
 was closed and opened alternately, by thrusting in and pull- 
 ing out a long stick, managed by the hand of the operator. 
 But the great peculiarity and improvement in the engine 
 was, that the receiver was not directly attached to the barrel. 
 A tube, provided with a stop-cock, passed from the upper 
 part of the side of the barrel in a horizontal direction along 
 a groove, in a wooden board, covered by a thick iron plate, 
 and was then bent up so as barely to project through the 
 iron. The receiver was no longer a globe, or pear-shaped 
 vessel, with various leaky apertures in it, but a bell-shaped, 
 hollow glass jar, which, turned with its mouth downwards, 
 like an inverted drinking-glass, was, to use Boyle's homely 
 but expressive words, ' whelmed on upon the plate, well 
 covered with cement.' When the pump was wrought, the 
 air in the bell-jar, or receiver, was drawn out through the 
 horizontal tube. The reader familiar with pneumatics will 
 recognise in the whole arrangement a device which has been 
 followed, with trifling alterations, in every later air-pump, 
 
2 oo Religio- Chemici. 
 
 down to the present day. Every modern air-pump has its 
 ' plate,' made however not of iron, but of brass or of plate 
 glass ; and the bell-jar receivers are whelmed on upon the 
 air-pump plate, as they were in Boyle's day. One great 
 advantage of this arrangement was the increased stability 
 given to the apparatus, by transferring the heavy glass re- 
 ceiver, which in the first air-pump was fixed by a narrow 
 tube to the barrel, to a flat support, on which it rested on a 
 broad base. Another advantage was the avoidance of many 
 apertures, which could not be kept air-tight, so that air 
 should not leak into the receiver. For it must be remem- 
 bered, that every pneumatic receiver, or other exhausted 
 vessel, lies at or near the bottom of a deep sea of air, as a 
 diving-bell does at the bottom of a sea of water, and the 
 latter does not more readily rush into the bell, through the 
 smallest fissure, than air forces its way along the most im- 
 perceptible channel into the exhausted receiver. In the 
 diving-bell there is air, at least, to resist the intrusion of 
 water ; but in the receiver there is a vacuum soliciting the en- 
 trance of air. The fewer, therefore, the valves and stopcocks, 
 the greater the chance of producing and preserving a good 
 vacuum. A third advantage, to mention no more, was the 
 facility which the plate afforded for placing on it any object, 
 such as a candle, a barometer, a thermometer, a piece of 
 clockwork, a growing plant, or the like ; and when the object 
 was exactly arranged, bell-jars of various dimensions and 
 shapes could be laid over it, and the pump set working. In 
 the first pneumatical engine, bodies intended to be subjected 
 to a vacuum were awkwardly inserted by a large aperture at 
 the top of the receiver, or suspended within it by strings. 
 
 Boyle published the account of the experiments he made 
 with his second air-pump in 1669, and laid pneumatics again 
 almost entirely aside for seven or eight years. In 1676, 
 
Robert Boyle. 201 
 
 however, he began to think of resuming the subject, and he 
 was fixed in his resolution by a visit paid him by a very in- 
 genious and inventive Frenchman, Denis Papin, whose 
 name is still connected with one of his many devices, the 
 Bone-Digester, a peculiar high pressure steam-boiler, with 
 which he effected strange triumphs in cookery. He has a 
 place, and a high one, long overlooked, among the inven- 
 tors of the steam-engine ; and it will presently appear that 
 he has a claim, also overlooked, to a high place among the 
 inventors of the air-pump. Papin came to England in 
 search of some situation which might afford scope for his 
 mechanical genius. Boyle had lost the services of Hooke, 
 whom, as we learn from Mr. Weld, he generously released 
 from his engagements with him in I662, 1 in order that he 
 might become curator and experimenter to the Royal So- 
 ciety. Papin for a time became assistant to Boyle, whose 
 indifferent health prevented him from experimenting much 
 himself, and a new series of pneumatic researches was 
 undertaken. This was the more readily accomplished, that 
 Papin had brought with him ' a pneumatic pump of his 
 own, made by himself,' and much superior in efficacy to 
 either of Boyle's pneumatical engines. 
 
 An engraving and minute description of Papin's air-pump 
 are given in Boyle's tract, entitled, ' A Continuation of New 
 Experiments, Physico-Mechanical, touching the spring and 
 weight of the Air, and their Effects, Second Part.' The 
 substance of this tract was first noted down in French, by 
 Papin, who performed most of the experiments ; then trans- 
 lated by Boyle, or under his superintendence, into Latin, in 
 which the treatise was first published. Afterwards, this 
 was translated, under Boyle's supervision, into English, in 
 """which it is reprinted in Birch's Boyle, vol. iv. p. 504. 
 
 1 Weld, vol. i. p. 197. 
 
2O 2 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 We cannot give the original date of the Latin or English 
 editions of the tract, which must be regarded as the joint 
 production of Boyle and Papin, but the experiments re- 
 corded in it are ail dated. The first bears date July u, 
 1676^ the last, February 17, 1679. 2 Papin's air-pump, 
 which he brought with him, is, therefore, at least as 
 old as 1676, which may be considered the date of its in- 
 troduction into England. Its great peculiarity, as con- 
 trasted with former air-pumps, was, that it had two barrels. 
 It was, according to Boyle, Papin's own contrivance. The 
 former, referring to the use he made of the latter's me- 
 chanical devices in prosecuting his researches, says, ' Not 
 a few of the mechanical instruments (especially the double 
 pump and wind-gun), which sometimes were of necessary 
 use to us in our work, are to be referred to his invention, 
 who also made some of them, at least in part, with his own 
 hands.' 3 
 
 Papin's air-pump was a curious machine ; it had two 
 pumps standing side by side, the mouths of the barrels 
 being turned upwards. Each of the piston-rods terminated 
 in a stirrup attached to its upper end, and the stirrups were 
 connected by a rope or cord, which passed over a vertical 
 grooved wheel or large pulley fixed on a moveable axis. 
 To work the machine, the exerciser of the pumps, as he is 
 called in the original account, put his feet into the stirrups, 
 and holding on, as it should seem, by his hands, to the 
 upper part of the frame-work of the pump, or leaning 
 against it (for the description is not precise on this parti- 
 cular), moved his feet alternately up and down as a hand- 
 loom weaver does, or a culprit on the treadmill. The 
 pistons or suckers, which were bottomless brass cylinders, 
 had valves opening upwards, like that of an ordinary water- 
 
 1 Birch's Boyle, vol. iv. p. 519. 2 Hid. p. 593. 3 Ibid. p. 506. 
 
Robert Boyle. 203 
 
 pump ; and similar valves were placed at the bottom of the 
 cylinders, which were filled with water to a certain height, 
 that the pistons might move air-tight in them. From the 
 cylinders, tubes passed to a common canal, terminating in 
 the air-pump plate, on which receivers to be exhausted 
 were laid, as in Boyle's second engine. 
 
 The advantages of Papin's arrangement were very great. 
 When a single pump is used, it becomes increasingly diffi- 
 cult, as the exhaustion proceeds, to draw out the piston 
 against the pressure of the external air, which comes to- 
 wards the end to oppose an unresisted force equal to nearly 
 fifteen pounds on each square inch, to the extrusion of the 
 piston. When the piston, on the other hand, is pushed 
 home, it is driven into the barrel, with the same force 
 which resists its withdrawal, and is liable to break the 
 valves, or injure the bottom of the cylinder. But if the 
 piston-rods of adjoining cylinders are balanced against each 
 other, as those in Papin's machine were, so that the one 
 ascends as the other descends, the evils described are all ob- 
 viated. The resistance which the air offers to the ascent 
 of the one piston is balanced, or nearly so, by the force 
 with which it compels the other piston to descend, so that 
 the two hang against each other almost in equilibrio. A 
 very slight expenditure of force, accordingly, little more 
 than is requisite to overcome the friction of the moving 
 parts, suffices for the working of the pump. A double- 
 barrelled air-pump not only exhausts twice as expeditiously 
 as a single-barrelled one, but does double work for nearly 
 the same expenditure of force. In this respect there is an 
 essential difference between a double-barrelled air-pump and 
 a double-barrelled gun. In the latter, a double effect is 
 gained only at the expense of a double expenditure of time 
 and force. Two gun -barrels require twice the charge, 
 
204 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 loading, ramming, priming, and firing of one barrel, and 
 twice the time to load. In the air-pump, on the other 
 hand, the working of the one piston renders much more 
 easy the work of the other, and diminishes the time requisite 
 for working both. The barrels of a musket are isolated, 
 though lying side by side, and are not mutually dependent ; 
 but the pistons of the air-pump are, as it were, organically 
 connected, like twins, and aid each other's movements. 
 The peculiarity of Papin's device would have been more 
 apparent, if his machine had been called, not the double- 
 barrelled, but the twin-piston air-pump. The twin-pistons 
 were not the only advantage of Papin's pump ; its valves 
 were opened and shut by the air which passed .through the 
 apertures they covered, so that the valves were self-acting, 
 like those of a water-pump. If the pistons were only kept 
 alternately ascending and descending, nothing else was 
 needed for the working of the machine. In Boyle's pneu- 
 matical engines, on the other hand, in addition to the labour 
 of working the pump, the operator had, at every stroke of 
 the piston, to shut a stop-cock and thrust in a plug, or to 
 open a stop-cock and pull out a plug. His engines, there- 
 fore, could not be wrought swiftly. 
 
 It is not a little singular, that Papin's air-pump should 
 have been overlooked by most later inventors and writers, 
 at least in England. We have not found it referred to in 
 any recent work of authority, although its curious stirrup- 
 arrangement, which has been employed in no English air- 
 pump, might have been expected to attract attention to- 
 wards it. Papin is mentioned by Nairne incidentally, as an 
 improver of the air-pump. 1 Dr. Hutton, in his Mathema- 
 tical Dictionary (1796, vol. i. p. 55), mentions Papin's two 
 barrels and twin-pistons, but not the stirrup-arrangement. 
 
 1 Phil. Trans. 1777, p. 635. 
 
Robert Boyle. 205 
 
 In Shaw's Boyle the whole machine is described and figured, 
 but Papin's name is not once mentioned, an omission 
 which, at the present day, would be considered inexcusable 
 in an editor or abridger. The double pump must pass, 
 with Shaw's readers, for an invention of Boyle's, yet even 
 the latter's great name has not kept the double-barrelled 
 stirrup air-pump in remembrance a significant proof how 
 little Boyle's works, even when abridged, are read by the 
 very historians of his labours. 
 
 It is in connexion with the double-barrelled air-pump 
 that the accepted history of the instrument is chiefly 
 erroneous, but the mistakes made in reference to the more 
 complex engine, have ultimately involved in confusion even 
 the authentic records of the steps by which the earlier 
 single-barrelled pump was improved. Recent writers on 
 pneumatics, having overlooked Papin's machine, whilst 
 they universally acknowledge the importance of two barrels 
 with the pistons counterbalancing each other, have attri- 
 buted this great improvement to Boyle, to Hooke, or to 
 Hauksbee, an admirable observer and very ingenious mecha- 
 nician, who flourished in the first decade of the eighteenth 
 century. Professor Baden Powell, in his interesting His- 
 tory of Natural Philosophy (p. 235), says, c Boyle made the 
 first improvement, and reduced the air-pump to nearly its 
 present construction.' So general a statement, in a brief 
 popular treatise, would not in itself, perhaps, call for 
 criticism. It is quoted, however, by Mr. Weld, and has 
 contributed, along with other things, to mislead him into 
 a curious error, which, if uncontradicted, will propagate a 
 grave mistake. The point of Professor Powell's statement 
 lies in the word ' nearly.' In our judgment, he uses it 
 with much too great a latitude. Boyle's two pneumatical 
 engines were awkward in construction, and without self- 
 
2o6 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 acting or mechanical valves. They could not be wrought 
 swiftly, and they produced only an imperfect vacuum. 
 Boyle himself ingenuously and ungrudgingly acknowledges, 
 that Guericke's pumps exhausted better than his. In com- 
 pliment to his beautiful Pneumatic Researches, the whole 
 of Europe, designedly passing by the prior claims of the 
 Burgomaster of Magdeburg, called the air-pump vacuum 
 * Vacuum Boylianum. 9 Boyle accepted the name, not as a 
 compliment, but as a designation of what he intended when 
 he used the word vacuum in his treatises. It referred to 
 something between an absolute plenum and an absolute 
 vacuum. It approached to the latter, but fell short of it. 
 It was not Nature's vacuum, the thing she so much ab- 
 horred, but Boyle's vacuum, the best that the Honourable 
 Robert Boyle could produce with his pneumatical engines. 
 It seems well to notice, although it is a digression, lest we 
 should be thought to have forgotten our duty as biographers, 
 that those things are not pointed out to disparage the genius 
 of the great philosopher. Professor Powell's statement 
 lessens instead of exalting Boyle's claims to our admiration. 
 His merit lies not in having constructed a perfect air-pump, 
 but in having made an excellent use of a very imperfect 
 one. There is a well-known class of painters who are 
 always wandering about in search of ' a good light,' whilst 
 Wilkies are completing great pictures in dim garrets. 
 There is an equally well-known class of natural philo- 
 sophers, for ever roving from mechanician to mechanician 
 in search of better instruments ; while others are discover- 
 ing new planets, new living beings, or new elements, by 
 apparatus which their dissatisfied brethren can demonstrate 
 to be unfit for the purpose. Boyle did not belong to this 
 tribe. He spared no cost, or time, or trouble, in en- 
 deavouring to obtain a good air-pump, but he did not aim 
 
Rolert Boyle. 207 
 
 at an ideal perfection. With what he was aware was an 
 imperfect instrument, he fell to work and achieved wonders. 
 His clear, keen, cautious spirit supplemented all defects in 
 mere machinery. Had he possessed, in 1659, one of the 
 exquisite Parisian air-pumps of the present day, his dis- 
 coveries would nevertheless have been for the time re- 
 markable performances. Effected, as they were, with his 
 awkward pneumatical engines, his pneumatic researches are 
 evidences of a rare genius for experimental inquiry. 
 
 We may, therefore, without scruple affirm, for it is the 
 truth, that Boyle's valveless, single-barrelled, leaky engines, 
 with their slow-moving stopcocks and plugs, and ineffectual 
 caulkings with sticking-plaster, were very differently con- 
 structed from the double-barrelled air-pumps of the seven- 
 teenth century, and were still more unlike the air-pumps 
 of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The difference, 
 in the last case, is not quite so great, but nearly equals that 
 between a Watt and a Newcomen steam-engine. 
 
 The particular claim, then, set up for Boyle, that he 
 devised the double air-pump, implied in the general claim 
 that he reduced the instrument nearly to its present con- 
 struction, may be set aside without further notice. That 
 merit is disclaimed by himself, and ascribed by him to 
 Papin. Hooke and Hauksbee are claimants against Papin, 
 not against Boyle. Professor Robison ascribes the inven- 
 tion of the double pump apparently to both of the former, 
 yet, after all, decidedly to neither. In one place he states 
 that Boyle ' was now assisted by Dr. Hooke.' ' This 
 person made a great improvement on the air-pump by 
 applying two syringes,' etc. 1 Professor Robison then goes 
 on to describe an instrument identical with Papin's in the 
 arrangement of its valves, and constructed on similar prin- 
 
 1 Encyc. Brit, yth edition, Art. Pneumatics, p. 80. 
 
208 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 ciples. Instead, however, of the stirrups, connected by a 
 cord passing over a pulley, the pistons are raised and de- 
 pressed by a pinion or cogged wheel, working into racks 
 cut on the piston-rods, as the single piston was moved in 
 Boyle's pneumatical engines. No date is assigned to this 
 alleged invention of Hooke's, nor does its describer quote 
 or name any work in justification of his statement. Pro- 
 fessor Robison then describes Hauksbee's pump, which is 
 almost identical with the instrument attributed to Hooke, 
 except that it is provided with the former's well-known 
 long gauge an appendage which measures, but at the 
 same time diminishes rather than increases the rarefying 
 power of an air-pump. Throughout the remainder of his 
 treatise, Robison refers to Hooke and Hauksbee as if they 
 had been independent inventors of the double pump, the 
 priority, however, being given to Hooke ; yet, in conclud- 
 ing his historical sketch, the latter's name is omitted, and 
 the author, as if he preferred Hauksbee's claim, says, ' the 
 double barrel and gauge by Hauksbee were capital improve- 
 ments, and on principle.' 1 
 
 Dr. Thomas Young, generally so exact, is not more 
 accurate than Professor Robison. c In the year 1658,' 
 says the former, ' Hooke finished an air-pump for Boyle, 
 
 in whose laboratory he was an assistant Hooke's 
 
 air-pump had two barrels.' 2 Dr. Young a rare thing 
 with him gives no authority for his statement ; and he 
 evidently supposes that the first English air-pump of 1658 
 was a double-barrelled one. We have already, however, 
 pointed out sufficiently fully that 1658 or 1659 is the date 
 of Boyle's great pneumatical engine which Hooke con- 
 structed for him, a single-barrelled pump, with a globular 
 receiver directly attached to it. 
 
 1 Op. cit. p. 93. " Young's Natural Philosophy ', edited by Kelland, p. 278. 
 
Robert Boyle. 209 
 
 Erroneous as Dr. Young's statement certainly is, it ap- 
 parently derives the fullest confirmation from the announce- 
 ment made by Mr. Weld in his History of the Royal Society, 
 that that body possesses a double-barrelled air-pump pre- 
 sented to it by Boyle in 1662. J This instrument is shown 
 to visitors, and can be seen by our readers for themselves 
 at Somerset House. Its barrels are about fourteen or fif- 
 teen inches long, and the piston-rods have racks working 
 into an unusually large-toothed wheel or pinion moved by 
 a handle. The whole instrument resembles an air-pump 
 of the present day. 
 
 It should seem at first sight impossible to question evi- 
 dence so demonstrative of the true date of the double pump, 
 as that supplied by the existence in the Royal Society's 
 collections, of an air-pump presented to it by Boyle, and 
 preserved since 1662 in its museum. Mr. Weld's state- 
 ment, however, will not bear examination. He has him- 
 self, without intending it, supplied one of the means of 
 disproving its accuracy. In the first volume of his History 
 (p. 96), he quotes the following passage from the Journal 
 Books of the Royal Society: 'January 2, 1660 (o.s.) 
 The Society again met, when Lord Brouncker was desired 
 to prosecute the experiments of the Recoyling of Gunns, 
 and to bring it in against the next meeting, and Mr. Boyle 
 his Cylinder. 9 
 
 In explanation of the last allusion, Mr. Weld furnishes a 
 note : c This refers to the air-pump, which, according to 
 Professor Powell, he reduced to nearly its present construc- 
 tion. The reader will be interested to know that the origi- 
 nal air-pump alluded to above, and constructed by Boyle, 
 was presented to the Society by him in 1662, and still 
 remains in their possession. // consists of two barrels.' 
 
 1 Weld, vol. i. p. 97. 
 O 
 
2 1 o Religio-Chemici. 
 
 The text and the annotation plainly contradict each other. 
 Had Mr. Weld considered, he would have seen that an 
 instrument emphatically called a cylinder, because provided 
 with one barrel, could not possibly be provided with two 
 barrels. The air-pump the Royal Society now possesses is 
 not, then, the one the Society requested Mr. Boyle to bring 
 to its meetings in 1660. Neither is it the instrument which 
 he formally presented to the Society in 1662 ; for he had 
 not a double air-pump in his possession till 1676, when he 
 made use of Papin's. Mr. Weld's date of 1662 can only 
 apply to Boyle's pneumatical engine completed in 1659. 
 We have direct evidence, however, of the most weighty 
 kind, to show what the instrument really was which Boyle 
 presented to the Royal Society. In his ' Continuation of 
 New Experiments Physico-mechanical, touching the Spring 
 and Weight of the Air ; Oxford, 1669,' already referred to, 
 as containing the description of his second pneumatical 
 engine, the following passage occurs : ' Being obliged to 
 make some journeys and removes, which allowed me no 
 opportunity to prosecute the experiments, I had made no 
 very great progress in my design before the convening of an 
 illustrious assembly of Virtuosi, which has since made itself 
 sufficiently known under the title of the Royal Society. 
 And having then thought fit to make a present to persons 
 so like to employ it well of the great engine I had till then 
 made use of in the physico-mechanical experiments about 
 the air,' etc. 1 This decides both what the instrument was, 
 and the date of its being given to the Society. It was the 
 first or great pneumatical engine of 1659, anc * was P re ~ 
 sented to the Virtuosi before their incorporation as the 
 Royal Society, which took place on the I5th of July 1662.- 
 Further evidence is not required ; but it seems well to 
 
 1 Preface, i, 2. 2 Weld, vol. i. p. 121. 
 
Robert Boyle. 2 1 1 
 
 notice, since a claim is set up for Hooke as having made 
 a double-barrelled pump in 1660, or before 1662, that 
 we have what amounts to a disclaimer of this from him. 
 Waller, in his Life of Hooke, after quoting a statement of 
 the latter's, already given in reference to his share in con- 
 structing Boyle's first pump, adds : ' The draught of this 
 air-pump, and all its parts, as it was after published by 
 Mr. Boyle, I have now by me, designed by Mr. Hooke, and 
 I have heard him say, he was then sent to London by Mr. 
 Boyle to get the barrel [not barrels] and other parts for 
 that engine, which could not be made at Oxford.' 1 
 
 In a curious way also, we have the united testimony of 
 Boyle and Hooke, as to the configuration and appearance of 
 the great engine. During Boyle's lifetime, he employed a 
 Mr. Faithorne to engrave his likeness. The portrait is 
 drawn in an oval or medallion, with pieces of apparatus 
 grouped around it. The latter were designed by Hooke, 
 and one of the two most conspicuous instruments is the great 
 pneumatical engine with a bird in its globular receiver. 
 This drawing is copied as a vignette on the title-page of each 
 volume of Birch's Boyle. Three letters from Hooke to 
 Boyle, of date 1664, containing references to the portrait 
 and its accompaniments, will be found in the Boyle Corre- 
 spondence. 2 
 
 From all that has been said it will appear that the double- 
 barrelled air-pump shown to visitors at Somerset House, is 
 as little Boyle's original air-pump, as the famous mace of 
 the Royal Society is Cromwell's 'bauble.' The wreck of 
 the great pneumatical engine may still lurk in some garret 
 or cellar of Somerset House. If so, it will be readily re- 
 cognised by a reference to the original drawing, and should 
 at once be transferred to a place of safety and honour. 
 
 i Life of Hooke, p. iv. 2 Birch's Boyle, vol. vi. pp. 487, 488, 501. 
 
2 1 2 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 One of Otto von Guericke's air-pumps is preserved in the 
 Royal Library at Berlin. All lovers of letters and science 
 would attach a high value to Boyle's air-pump, should it be 
 recovered. It would be precious as a personal relic of 
 Boyle and Hooke, and as a memento of the many great 
 men who handled it, and gazed on it, and learned from it 
 to alter all their conceptions of the properties of the air. 
 It would be a monument also, and visible symbol of great 
 discoveries, and preserve on permanent record, not the 
 model or effigy, perhaps inaccurate, of the original air-pump, 
 but the great pneumatical engine itself, which represented 
 for the time the ingenuity of some of the most ingenious 
 men of the age. Such rejoicings, however, are premature. 
 Although it is nobly represented by an unbroken succession 
 of no degenerate descendants, there is too much reason to 
 fear that the original air-pump, like the Dodo, has long been 
 extinct. 
 
 An ominous announcement of Mr. Weld's makes this too 
 probable. In a comment on the state of the Royal Society's 
 museum or repository in 1767, he says, * There appear to 
 have been a great number of models of machines and curious 
 instruments ; and it is a matter of regret that these have not 
 been preserved intact, as they would now form a collection 
 of undoubted interest.' 1 From this statement, it is plain that 
 we may fear the worst. The wood-work of the pneumatical 
 engine has, in all probability, been devoured long ago by the 
 ' great fire,' or by some lesser fire, and its brass cylinders and 
 appendages have descended into the melting-pot, to emerge 
 from it in more ignoble forms. None of the present cura- 
 tors or members of the Royal Society, nor their predeces- 
 sors, for more probably than a century, are responsible for 
 the disappearance of Boyle's air-pump, if in truth it is lost. 
 
 1 History of Royal Society, vol. ii. p. 43. 
 
Robert Boyle. 213 
 
 Nor would it be fair, when all things are considered, to 
 blame Boyle's contemporaries, or immediate successors, or 
 to accuse them of indifference or neglect. The instrument 
 was presented to them, not as a curiosity or relic, but as a 
 machine to be freely used for the performance of experi- 
 ments. As such it was employed by the early members of 
 the Royal Society, till other and better air-pumps came into 
 use, and were at their disposal. During Boyle's lifetime it 
 would not be valued as a memento or relic, and when we 
 consider through how many vicissitudes the Society has 
 passed ; how often it has had to shift its quarters ; and how 
 limited its means of accommodation were for a long period, 
 we cannot much wonder if the pneumatical engine was for- 
 gotten at some of the Society's removals, or deliberately 
 abandoned to its fate. We may at least, with great reason- 
 ableness, assume, that its fragile glass receiver had been 
 broken to pieces, before the close of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury. The strange inverted cylinder, and awkward wooden 
 tripod, which would then remain, would not readily be 
 recognised, even by instrument-makers, as the exhausting 
 apparatus of an air-pump. Only one, or, at most, two 
 engines like it, appear to have been constructed, and these 
 did not long remain in use, so that very few, after the lapse 
 of fifty years, would be familiar with the appearance of the 
 great pneumatical engine. After Hooke's death, in the 
 very beginning of last century, there was none living likely 
 to take a special interest in its preservation. Some zealous 
 curator, if it then existed, would sweep it into a corner, or 
 sweep it away as lumber. Mr. Weld's original air-pump 
 results from the combination of two quite unconnected 
 facts the one, that Boyle gave the Royal Society an air- 
 pump in 1662 ; the other, that the Society now possesses 
 an old air-pump. That the latter is not the original great 
 
214 ^ eligio- Ch em id . 
 
 pneumatical engine does not admit of doubt. Boyle, more- 
 over, is not known to have presented more than one air- 
 pump to the Royal Society. Unless, therefore, there is 
 evidence of the most explicit kind to show that the double- 
 barrelled instrument was once the property of that philo- 
 sopher, we must hold it as highly improbable that it ever 
 was in his hands. It will presently appear that it prob- 
 ably does not belong to his age, but is an air-pump of the 
 eighteenth century. 
 
 A few words will conclude the early history of the 
 English air-pump. Papin's double pump does not appear to 
 have been directly copied by English instrument-makers, so 
 that its stirrup arrangement, in particular, was practically 
 unknown. We have been unable to find any allusion by 
 Hooke himself to his having constructed a double-barrelled 
 air-pump, nor has any reference been given by those who 
 affirm that he did, to any existing instrument, or drawing, 
 or account of it. It would be dangerous, however, to as- 
 sert an absolute negative on this point, for Hooke's papers 
 are very numerous, are immethodically arranged, ill edited, 
 and not easily consulted. Yet had there been any noto- 
 rious declaration of Hooke's on the subject, it would have 
 been quoted by those who favour his pretensions. On the 
 other hand, Waller, who sets up a well-founded claim on 
 Hooke's part to Boyle's air-pump, limits the claim to the 
 one-barrelled pneumatical engine of 1659. Boyle and 
 Hooke were, from first to last, attached friends, and in 
 constant communication with each other. Had Hooke 
 devised a new air-pump, Boyle was the first person to 
 whom he would have shown it ; and even if he had not 
 explained its construction to Boyle, the latter could not 
 have failed to become acquainted with it, through one or 
 more of his large circle of friends and acquaintances. 
 
Robert Boyle. 1 1 5 
 
 Boyle, however, who acknowledges his obligations to 
 Hooke's ingenuity in reference to the second as well as 
 to the first-air-pump, speaks of Papin's double barrel as 
 something quite new to him, and extols its advantages. If 
 Hooke, therefore, constructed a double pump, it must have 
 been of later date than Papin's, which he may have seen, 
 for Papin and he must often have met at the Royal Society, 
 and perhaps at Boyle's residence. At all events, through 
 Boyle's account of the instrument, Hooke must have been 
 familiar with Papin's pump. Hooke (ob. 1702) survived 
 Boyle (ob. 1691) about ten years, and may have constructed 
 a new air-pump after the latter's death, but we have not 
 been able to find evidence that he did. 
 
 The first double-barrelled air-pump of English construc- 
 tion, of which, so far as we are aware, a figure and descrip- 
 tion are extant, is Hauksbee's. They occur in a small 
 quarto, c Physico-Mechanical Experiments on Various Sub- 
 jects, by Francis Hauksbee, F.R.S.' In the preface, the 
 author says, c The Honourable, and most excellent Mr. 
 Boyle . . . gave much light into the causes and operations 
 of nature ; and particularly by the invention of that most 
 useful instrument, the air-pump. The principal subject of 
 the following papers is, an account of great and further im- 
 provements of this noble machine, the air-pump, and of 
 many new experiments made thereby.' 
 
 The date of Hauksbee's work is 1709, but it consists 
 chiefly of reprints from the Philosophical Transactions of 
 papers published in earlier years. All of these papers are 
 of later date than 1703, after which we may date the pump 
 also. It is not unimportant to notice, that it was not made 
 public, and probably not constructed, till after Hooke's 
 death. Hauksbee speaks of it as an improvement on 
 Boyle's air-pump. Whether he is to be understood as re- 
 
2 r 6 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 ferring to Papiri's machine does not appear, but if familiar 
 with Boyle's descriptions of air-pumps, he could not be 
 ignorant of Papin's. At all events, Hauksbee's pump (the 
 long gauge excepted) is simply Papin's, with the stirrup ar- 
 rangement and pulley replaced by racks on the piston-rods, 
 and a pinion, moved by a handle. The advantages which 
 attend the employment of two barrels, with their pistons 
 balanced against each other, so as to be nearly indifferent 
 to the pressure of the atmosphere, are dwelt upon at great 
 length, as if they had been realized in Hauksbee's instru- 
 ment for the first time. All those advantages, however, 
 are pointed out with as much distinctness in the description 
 of Papin's instrument of 1676. In truth, the excellence of 
 Hauksbee's pumps did not lie, as Professor Robison thought, 
 in the introduction of any new principles (the long gauge 
 excepted), but in the combination of recognised principles, 
 and in the nicety of mechanical construction of the pumps; 
 They were a happy union of the best peculiarities of Papin 
 and Hooke's air-pumps. Hauksbee adopted the double- 
 barrel, counterbalancing pistons, and self-acting valves of 
 Papin, but replaced his awkward stirrups and pulley, by 
 Hooke's rack and pinion. We are strongly inclined to be- 
 lieve that Hooke's supposed invention of the double pump 
 has originated in the observation of his rack and pinion in 
 most modern air-pumps. It should seem, however, accord- 
 ing to the evidence hitherto produced, that Hauksbee, not 
 Hooke himself, first applied the latter's device to the double 
 air-pump. Nevertheless, Hooke is entitled to be named in 
 connexion with his own contrivance, and thus he will have 
 a threefold connexion with the instrument, as deviser of the 
 first air-pump, as one of the devisers of the second, and as 
 the author of the method of raising and depressing the pis- 
 tons in the fourth. Yet it cannot be denied, that the great 
 
Robert Boyle. 217 
 
 merit of the early double pump, does not consist in the mode, 
 whatever it be, employed to move the pistons, but in their 
 mutual twin dependence, and in the arrangement of the 
 self-acting valves. To Papin all this merit belongs. 
 Whether he was the inventor of the instrument he showed 
 to Boyle, we cannot positively affirm. Boyle understood 
 that he was. Winkler, who was Professor of Natural 
 Philosophy at Leipsic, in the middle of last century, in his 
 Elements of Natural Philosophy, gives a good sketch of the 
 history of the air-pump. Hauksbee, and Leupold of Leip- 
 sic, who was contemporary with Hauksbee, are the only 
 parties to whom Winkler refers as having a claim to be 
 considered inventors of the double air-pump. He makes 
 no allusion to Papin's. M. Libes, in his Hist, des Progres 
 de la Physique, states, that Papin and Hauksbee are the only 
 claimants of the double pumps ; and that Cotes of Cam- 
 bridge, a contemporary of Hauksbee, attributed the inven- 
 tion to Papin. 1 
 
 The reader will now understand why we should think it 
 in the highest degree improbable that the double-barrelled 
 air-pump of the Royal Society ever belonged to Boyle. It 
 is possibly a relic of Hooke's, and of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, but more probably a memento of Hauksbee, and be- 
 longing to the eighteenth century. 
 
 By such steps was the modern air-pump conducted 
 through its first improvements. They were but four, and 
 we briefly recapitulate them here, for the sake of such 
 readers as wish only the fruits of an historical investigation. 
 
 I. 1659. The construction of a pneumatical engine, 
 consisting of a single-barrelled pump, with a solid piston 
 moved by a rack and pinion, and a globular glass receiver 
 directly communicating with the cylinder. 
 
 1 Hist, des Progres de la Physique, iii. p. 56. 
 
21 8 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 ii. 1667. The separation of the glass receiver from the 
 cylinder, and introduction of the air-pump plate, on which 
 bell jars could be placed and used as receivers. 
 
 in. 1676. The introduction of the double-barrelled 
 pump, with self-acting valves in the cylinders and pistons, 
 and with piston rods suspended at opposite ends of a cord, 
 passing over a pulley. 
 
 iv. 1704. The combination of the rack and pinion of 
 the first and second air-pumps, with the two barrels, twin 
 pistons, and self-acting valves of the third. 
 
 Great improvements have been made in air-pumps, even 
 recently, although they do not generally differ much in ex- 
 ternal appearance from those constructed by Hauksbee in 
 the beginning of last century. The perfection of an air- 
 pump lies in certain nice mechanical adjustments of con- 
 cealed valves, and other internal, and for the time invisible, 
 arrangements, so that mere similarity or even identity of 
 outward appearance is no criterion of equality in effective 
 power. An ordinary observer could not, by a casual in- 
 spection, distinguish a chronometer which varies only a 
 second in a week, from a chronometer which keeps time 
 no better than a Dutch clock. We must guard against the 
 notion that no improvements have been made since Boyle's 
 day, because air-pumps look the same. Historians of past 
 successes, we would avoid the error into which historians 
 so easily fall, of exaggerating the past because it is the past. 
 The catholic, generous Boyle, were he to revive among us, 
 would gaze with wonder and delight at our glass-barrelled, 
 glass-plated, exquisite air-pumps, and cease to call his own 
 the Great Pneumatical Engine. 
 
 We have seen what Boyle's air-pump was. We have 
 now briefly to see what he did with it. Here, no Hooke 
 nor Papin can divide the merit with him. Boyle was not 
 
Robert Boyle. 219 
 
 eminently constructive, as they were, in the matter of 
 mechanical devices, but he was very inventive in devising 
 appropriate experiments, and he could always compass their 
 execution. Hence it happened, that, though Otto von 
 Guericke, a man of great genius, had the start of Boyle by 
 some five years, the latter made so much better use than 
 Guericke of the air-pump, that it was named, by admiring 
 Europe, Boyle's, not Guericke's, machine. 
 
 There are few of the mechanical properties of the at- 
 mosphere which he did not learn for himself, and teach 
 to others, by his instrument. Its vital or life- sustaining 
 powers, he understood better than most even of the learned 
 physicians and naturalists of his time. He made some pro- 
 gress in investigating the chemical relations of the air, and 
 ingeniously converted his pneumatical engine, as occasion 
 required, into a retort, an alembic, a still with its conden- 
 ser, and a gas apparatus, in which he evolved and liquefied 
 fumes and vapours, and eliminated gases by ' corrosion and 
 fermentation.' Galileo, Torricelli, Pascal, Guericke, and 
 others had shown that air is heavy, and that it exerts a 
 great pressure on all bodies within it. Boyle multiplied 
 and varied the proofs of this by endless impressive and 
 convincing experiments. He made a tolerable approxi- 
 mation towards exactly determining this specific gravity 
 of air, as compared both with water and mercury, and 
 came nearer the true number than any of his early con- 
 temporaries. 
 
 The power of air to conduct sound had been long vaguely 
 credited, then doubted, and finally, as it appeared, proved 
 not to exist. Endeavours had been made to settle the 
 question by very ingenious experiments with the Torri- 
 cellian vacuum, in which a sounding body was placed, in 
 the expectation that, when made to vibrate, no sound 
 
2 2 o R eligio- Chemici. 
 
 would be heard. Allowance, however, was not made for 
 the conducting power of the walls enclosing the vacuum, 
 and the trial, in consequence, was conducted in such a way 
 as to allow the sounding body to strike on the solid glass 
 boundaries of the void, as the tongue or hammer of a bell 
 strikes the bell. A sound, accordingly, loud and clear, was 
 heard, and the conclusion was drawn that the presence of 
 air is not essential to the conduction of sounds, even when 
 those are produced, like the cries of birds flying high in the 
 air, or a peal of thunder, in circumstances where they can- 
 not be conveyed to the ear along solid conductors. Guericke 
 repeated the trial with his air-pump, and found that sound 
 was not transmitted through a vacuum. The experiment, 
 however, taught him little. He does not appear to have 
 expected the absence of air to annihilate sound. He seems 
 to have thought, that if air conducted sounds, we should 
 not hear these when much to the leeward of a sounding 
 body. Guericke confounded the transference of sounds, 
 by a series of waves or undulations, through the air, with 
 its carrying or conveyance, like smoke, by the air. A mis- 
 take of the same kind is constantly made in reference to all 
 the physical forces, such as light and heat, which are pro- 
 pagated by undulations or vibrations. A simple experiment 
 and a familiar observation will correct the false conception, 
 and show what misled Guericke. The experiment is to 
 drop a stone into a still pool. A ring-like undulation im- 
 mediately commences to travel from the place where the 
 stone plunged into the water, and, increasing in diameter, 
 spreads on every side, till it reaches the shores of the lake. 
 But the outer wave which ripples on the shore is not the 
 very water which the stone first disturbed. Each particle 
 of water changes its place very little, and moves only 
 through a small space, although the impulse commenced 
 
Robert Boyle. 221 
 
 by the stone travels over a wide area. A sounding body 
 causes air to undulate, as the stone does the water. 
 
 The observation which may be considered equivalent 
 to an experiment tried for us by nature, is the spectacle of 
 a field of growing corn, shaken by a gentle wind. When 
 we look at such a field, we see wave after wave sweep 
 over the nodding grain from one side of the cultivated 
 space to the opposite. The ears of corn, however, have 
 not been swept from one corner of the field to the other. 
 Each ear, anchored by its stalk to the soil, has only moved 
 forward a little space in the direction of the wind, and then 
 moved back to its original position. Sound travels through 
 the atmosphere in the same way, not borne along with 
 moving particles of the atmosphere, which fly like arrows, 
 carrying the sound with them, but propagated as a vibration 
 transferred from particle to particle of the air, which is 
 thrown into undulations, but does not flow as a current. 
 The effect of a sounding body on the atmosphere is like 
 that produced when we strike the first of a long row of 
 billiard-balls, so as to make it impinge on the second. 
 An impulse runs along the line, moving each intermediate 
 ball very little, but causing the last to fly off" from the row. 
 Another striking illustration of what we are seeking to ex- 
 plain, is supplied by the firing of a great gun. The flash 
 of the cannon is rendered visible to the eye by a series of 
 very swift undulations, which travel in every direction from 
 the cannon as a centre. The sound, in like manner, by 
 slower undulations through the atmosphere, reaches the 
 ear, whilst the smoke does not radiate from the centre, but 
 is carried by the air entirely to windward. 
 
 How far Boyle understood all this, we cannot precisely 
 tell, but he was one whom no theory would prevent from 
 subjecting to direct trial, what he thought experiment only 
 
222 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 could decide. Undeterred by the results of the investiga- 
 tions of Guericke and others, he tried for the first time, in 
 an unexceptionable way, whether sounds are inaudible in 
 a vacuum. His experlmentum crucis was as simple and 
 elegant as it was decisive. He hung within the globular 
 receiver of his great pneumatical engine, by a thin string, a 
 watch with its case open. The receiver was large enough 
 to contain sixty wine-pints of fluid, so that the watch, sus- 
 pended in its centre, was far removed from the glass walls 
 of the globe. 
 
 The sounding body was thus detached from all solid con- 
 ductors, the thin string excepted, which was as slight a con- 
 ductor as well could be used to support the watch. When 
 all had been arranged, the air was slowly withdrawn from 
 the receiver, and the beating of the time-piece, which was 
 loudly audible at first, fell fainter and fainter upon the ear 
 as the exhaustion proceeded, till at length it ceased to be 
 audible at all, whilst the silent hands moved as before round 
 the dial-plate, showing that the movements of the watch 
 had not ceased, but only their sound. The air was then 
 slowly readmitted, when the sound reappeared, waxed 
 louder and louder, and finally reached its previous inten- 
 sity, when the receiver was filled as at first with air. 
 
 The experiment was repeated by Boyle in various ways, 
 and the ingenuity of later observers has supplied many 
 contrivances for making the experiment demonstrative to 
 large audiences, by whom the ticking of a time-piece could 
 not be heard. The original trial, however, was complete. 
 Since Boyle's time, no natural philosopher has doubted that 
 the air is the great and essential medium of sound. 
 
 From the earliest times, the necessity of air to the main- 
 tenance of combustion must have been more or less dis- 
 tinctly perceived, yet the notions of the ancients on the sub- 
 
Robert Boyle. 223 
 
 ject were at the best very vague. Nor could Boyle do 
 more than dissipate some of the vagueness ; yet he did a 
 great deal. With untiring patience, he enclosed in his 
 engine lighted candles, portfires, loaded pistols, which he 
 fired by dexterous contrivances, and many other arrange- 
 ments of combustible bodies, which he rapidly cut off from 
 a supply of air, or did not kindle, as in the case of gun- 
 powder, till the air was withdrawn. He did not interpret, 
 or he misinterpreted much that he saw was instructive 
 enough j but he understood a great deal of what he wit- 
 nessed. He could not only infallibly demonstrate that 
 without air, flame could not exist, but he dimly foresaw 
 what, apparently, might be easily apprehended, and yet was 
 not clearly perceived till a century later, that a burning body 
 is not parting with some fiery essence or principle to the 
 air, the loss of which renders it incombustible, but is rob- 
 bing the air of part of its substance, which is added to the 
 burning mass, and makes it insusceptible of combustion. If 
 a flaming candle owed its luminousness simply to its giving 
 off an inflammable principle, it should flame brightest in a 
 vacuum, which would solicit the evolution of the principle 
 of heat and light, whereas a candle will not flame at all in a 
 void, but disappears, as if snuffed out by invisible snuffers. 
 The moon has no atmosphere, and, therefore, we may be 
 certain no tallow-chandlers, no camphine lamps, or coal gas 
 companies. No lunar Diogenes goes about seeking for an 
 honest man, at least with a lantern. The only torch that 
 would suit a Cynic in the moon, is the electric light, which 
 feeds upon electricity, and not upon air. 
 
 Imperfect as Boyle's views on combustion were, they 
 greatly exceeded, in clearness, those of his immediate suc- 
 cessors. It was by defect and omission that he erred, as 
 well as Mayow and Hooke, who also, for their time, had 
 
224 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 unusually accurate notions of the nature of combustion, 
 rather than by holding positively erroneous opinions. After 
 those clear thinkers came the Dark Middle Age of modern 
 chemistry, with its chimera of a ' phlogiston,' or invisible, 
 unsubstantial fire-essence, in theory an entity and yet a non- 
 entity ; in fact, a veritable dark lantern, which Lavoisier at 
 last succeeded in knocking to pieces, after satisfying every 
 reasonable person that there never had been, at any time, 
 a light within the lantern to make it worth preserving. A 
 hundred years of retrograde speculation on combustion, 
 divide Boyle's clear views on the subject from the clearer 
 but still defective views of Cavendish, Watt, Priestley, and 
 Scheele, which culminated in Lavoisier's clearest announce- 
 ment of the theory of burning, in which, nevertheless, as in 
 the sun, the telescope of a more modern chemistry can see 
 dark spaces. 
 
 Respiration and combustion are closely analogous as 
 chemical phenomena. The first man that quickened a 
 smouldering brand by blowing upon it, had discovered that 
 the breath of life is also the nourisher of flame. The east- 
 ern moralist compared life to a vapour. The quenched, 
 inverted torch, was a classical emblem of death, and 
 the modern poet sings of the c Vital spark of heavenly 
 flame.' Boyle was one of the first to give such expressions 
 a literal signification, and to announce, with no little clear- 
 ness, the aphorism of modern chemistry, that no gas or 
 gaseous mixture, in which a candle goes out, will support 
 animal life. As he, like all the chemists of his century, 
 confounded the various gases under a common name of air, 
 it was impossible that he should announce the aphorism in 
 the terms we now do, but he substantially gave expression 
 to it. No subject interested him more than the relation of 
 life to air. He tried a great number of experiments, many 
 
Robert Boyle. 225 
 
 of them, it must be confessed, very cruel, as to the influence 
 of a vacuum on living animals. 
 
 It was with no wanton cruelty, still less in the spirit 
 of philosophic indifference, that Boyle tortured animals. 
 Burnet tells us that his sensitiveness to their sufferings made 
 him abandon the study of anatomy, in that age prosecuted 
 with a needless amount of infliction of pain on living crea- 
 tures. We can well believe this, for it was quite in keeping 
 with the amiability and benevolence of Boyle's character ; 
 but no indications of his humanity appear in the records of 
 his pneumatic researches. Experiments which would shock 
 our readers if but alluded to, and which involved inconceiv- 
 able and protracted agony to their subjects, are as calmly 
 related as if they had been performed upon a candle or a 
 time-piece. This would not seem wonderful in a strictly 
 scientific narration, which supposed pain taken for granted, 
 and left it unnoticed. But it was not Boyle's way to pro- 
 gress though a subject, like a railway train implicitly guided 
 by the rails, nor even like a stage-coach, keeping, on the 
 whole, the middle of the road. He got over his ground as 
 travellers ride across Salisbury Plain, by a kind of zig-zag 
 progression, which can make the sharpest angles on either 
 side without risk of breaking a fence, or striking a wall, or 
 falling over a bridge. Yet not a whisper does he utter as 
 to the cruelties he was perpetrating, although Hooke, who 
 has the reputation of being an unamiable man, when describ- 
 ing an experiment on a living animal, cannot forbear giving 
 vent to remorseful expressions as to the pain which the 
 experiment cost himself as performer and spectator, nor 
 omit recording that he will never repeat so cruel a deed. 
 The explanation of the anomaly is to be found in the 
 intense conviction Boyle had, that his air-pump experiments 
 would immensely improve physiology, enlarge men's know- 
 
 P 
 
226 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 ledge of the nature of respiration, and put in the hands of 
 the physician new methods of lessening human suffering. 
 
 The stream of Boyle's benevolence had scooped for itself 
 one great channel, in which, fraught with gifts for his 
 brethren, it all ran. He thought not of the agonies of a 
 bird, when its pantings in the vacuum promised to teach 
 him how to cheat consumption out of her victims. Nor 
 should it be forgotten that Harvey's great discovery of the 
 circulation of the blood had filled the disciples of Bacon 
 with as extravagant expectations as to the results which 
 should flow from the extension of his discovery, as men 
 now-a-days anticipate from the triumphs of galvanism. 
 The sacredness of even human life was forgotten. It is 
 scarcely credible at the present day, that the chief physi- 
 cians of London, contemporary with Boyle, applied to the 
 presiding physician of Bedlam, for a lunatic, into whose 
 veins they proposed to inject an animal's blood. When 
 this extraordinary request was refused, they succeeded in 
 persuading a crazy scholar, an emeritus out- pensioner of 
 St. Luke's, though not on its roll, to submit to have sheep*"s 
 blood transfused into his blood-vessels. Henry Olden- 
 burg, the thrifty secretary of the Royal Society, may still 
 be heard, in an existing letter in the Boyle Correspondence, 
 chuckling over the crazy man risking life and what remained 
 of reason for a guinea ! 
 
 When men fared so, we cannot wonder that it went ill 
 with pigeons and frogs. Boyle forgot everything but the 
 mighty improvements in medicine which were likely to re- 
 sult from his experiments, and showed no mercy. And it 
 is consolatory to think, that the transient sufferings of the 
 innocent creatures he tortured, have served to lessen the 
 agonies of generations of men, although the state of physio- 
 logy in his day long prevented any harvest being reaped 
 
Robert Boyle. 227 
 
 from his trials. Till Priestley discovered oxygen, and 
 Cavendish showed the chemical composition of air, and 
 Lavoisier expounded the true relation of oxygen to com- 
 bustion, respiration was an enigma, nor is it yet a perfectly 
 solved problem. Boyle, however, had the faith of genius 
 in the value of his early expositions of the relation of the 
 atmosphere to life, and committed them contentedly, as a 
 seed which should yet bear the choicest fruit, to the hands 
 of his successors. His good taste was not so conspicuous 
 as his faith. In the drawing of his second pneumatical en- 
 gine he has introduced a revolting picture of a miserable cat 
 struggling in the agonies of suffocation. In his medallion 
 portrait as already noticed, he has a bird in the receiver 
 of his air-pump. The most maligned of French Vivisec- 
 tors would not venture on such drawings at the present 
 day. Boyle was in many respects before his age ; but 
 noble Christian as he was, he was tinctured with its bar- 
 barity. The designs referred to, however, are important 
 proofs of the value he set upon his experiments on animals. 
 
 We can say no more concerning his air-pump researches 
 although much remains unnoticed ; neither can we dwell 
 upon the services he has rendered science indirectly, by 
 the proofs he gave of the value of his machine as an instru- 
 ment of research. 
 
 There is scarcely one of the physical sciences which is 
 not indebted to the air-pump. Optics employs it to mea- 
 sure the refractive powers of gases. The science of heat 
 has been indebted to it, in the hands of Leslie, Faraday, 
 and others, for great strides of progression. Acoustics, by 
 means of it, ascertains the laws which regulate the propagation 
 of sound through elastic fluids. In many ways it is essen- 
 tial to the researches of the natural philosopher and physio- 
 logist, and it is an essential appendage of every chemist's 
 
228 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 laboratory. It forms an essential part of the condensing 
 steam-engine, and is employed on the largest scale in the 
 purification of sugar, and in other economical processes. 
 If it has failed in its most gigantic application, that, namely, 
 of the atmospheric railway, Boyle, at least, is not to blame. 
 Had the projectors of that scheme looked back two cen- 
 turies, and read the philosopher's wailings over the failure 
 even of the best sticking-plaster to close the chinks in his 
 receiver, they would have thought twice before they tried 
 to realize their project. When we think of all the air- 
 pump has effected, we feel compelled to retract what we 
 have said against Boyle's earliest and rudest instrument, 
 and to unite with him in calling it the Great Pneumatical 
 Engine. 
 
 Had our limits permitted, it would have been pleasant to 
 dwell on Boyle's other achievements as a physical philoso- 
 pher. We should have tried to show what an acute in- 
 vestigator of the laws of heat he was, often mistaken, 
 always ingenious ; sometimes successful in bringing to light 
 striking phenomena, and elucidating remarkable laws. He 
 was the first to introduce into Great Britain the famous 
 Florentine weather-glasses, which the short-lived but me- 
 morable Accademia del Cimento taught Europe how to 
 make. England came thus to be provided with delicate 
 thermometers earlier than countries lying nearer Italy ; and 
 a great impetus towards the study of heat was communi- 
 cated to the natural philosophers of our country. Boyle 
 took a leading part in prosecuting the subject. He devised 
 some very useful forms of the thermometer, and assisted in 
 discovering a process by which the instrument might be 
 infallibly graduated, so that all thermometers should agree 
 in their indications that is, should point to the same figure 
 on their scale, when the heat affecting them was the same. 
 
Robert Boyle. 229 
 
 He did not, however, perfect a method of graduation. 
 Hooke, Halley, and others, went further than he did, and 
 Newton outstripped them all. The modern thermometer 
 is as much his as the glass prism. 
 
 It would have been pleasant also to have shown how 
 endless his distillations, cohobations, sublimations, and 
 fermentations were, and what glimpses he got of great 
 discoveries, which, nevertheless, he missed. He toiled 
 unceasingly beside the huge furnace, which the Hermetic 
 philosophers of his day thought essential to their work, and 
 constructed of dimensions large enough to rival a limekiln, 
 or serve a glasshouse, as may be learned from his letters 
 and folios, by the smiling chemist of the present day, whose 
 crucible-furnace would go into his hat, and his blowpipe 
 into his waistcoat pocket. Boyle called himself the c Scep- 
 tical Chymist/ but he had a weak side towards alchemy. 
 He was constantly begging, borrowing, or purchasing medi- 
 cal recipes, and much of his time was wasted in the manu- 
 facture of specifics. Religious considerations probably 
 precluded him from faith in the alchemist's long sought-for 
 elixir of life, which should confer an earthly immortality on 
 mankind. The elixir was the specific of specifics, which 
 made lesser specifics needless ; the cure for the one disease, 
 Death, which swallows up all others. Boyle did not believe 
 in such a specific, but there was nothing in Scripture to for- 
 bid the belief that the day might come when man's God- 
 given skill should succeed in neutralizing disease, and Health 
 should walk side by side with Life up to the very gates of 
 the tomb. Boyle's furnaces, accordingly, were always at 
 work, concocting elixirs of health, but their ineffectual fires 
 blazed in vain. The dyspeptic, melancholic elixir-maker 
 himself, was a poor specimen of the worth of his specifics, 
 though this was perhaps as it should be. The alchemical 
 
Religio-Chemici. 
 
 professors of transmutation never had by any chance a 
 penny in their purses, and the hermetic process always 
 began by the begging of so much base metal which the 
 adept should transmute into silver or gold. Boyle was a 
 stanch believer in transmutation, as he was well entitled to 
 be, for there is no a priori objection to its possibility, as 
 there is to the possibility of a self-sustaining perpetual 
 motion, and in his time there appeared many proofs of 
 transmutation having been effected. It may be realized 
 any day. Boyle tried to multiply the precious metals, and 
 the gold showed symptoms at least of coming. He amazed 
 himself, and alarmed Newton, who counselled concealment, 
 by an experiment where gold and mercury being mingled 
 together grew very hot, and the latter seemed going to fix. 
 There was nothing very alarming in the experiment, after 
 all. It was only a costly way of illustrating, what a little 
 gunpowder would have shown better, and a great deal more 
 cheaply, that chemical combination is accompanied by the 
 evolution of heat. Not long before his death, Boyle pro- 
 cured the repeal of a statute of Henry iv., which forbade 
 ' the multiplying of gold and silver,' so that more successful 
 transmuters than himself might engage in the fixation of 
 mercury, without fear of their lives. 
 
 As a naturalist he was indefatigable. He observed for 
 himself, collected specimens, read largely, and carried on 
 an extensive correspondence with every quarter of the globe. 
 Every one was pressed into his service, from the English 
 ambassadors abroad, to the labourers in his gardens, and the 
 sailors he fell in with. It was a transition-age, half credu- 
 lous, half sceptical, but more the former than the latter, 
 and many of Boyle's correspondents had eyes only for the 
 wonderful. Among his unpublished works is a manuscript 
 record of conversations with sea-captains and pilots. What 
 
Robert Boyle. 231 
 
 wonderful things sea-captains behold we know, and how 
 ready they are to charm willing ears with them. Boyle 
 was a very cautious, though inquisitive man, and had a 
 great stock of common sense. He needed it all in estimat- 
 ing the value of the recitals made to him ; and we need 
 neither wonder nor blame, if he sometimes stamped as 
 authentic, narrations which, in reality, were half genuine 
 mixtures of inaccurate observations, unintentional decep- 
 tions, and deliberate lies. He winnowed the wheat from 
 the chaff, on the whole, very fairly, if we remember how 
 imperfect his winnowing shovel was, and that there was 
 but his solitary one at work. We may compare him, as a 
 critic and methodizer of the Natural History of his time, to 
 one of the Californian gold-washers of our own day. Up 
 to his knees in water he stood, provided with one small 
 wooden bowl, of his own making, with which to sift the 
 gold from the sand. Down came the river, bringing grains 
 of the true metal : brassy pyrites, particles which, to many 
 eyes, looked more metallic than the gold ; yellow mica 
 scales glistening brighter than the pyrites ; pebbles, gravel, 
 shingles, clay, sand, and mud. With wonderful dexterity, 
 everything considered, Boyle contrived to let nearly all but 
 the gold flow on ; and if he occasionally mistook grains of the 
 pyrites or mica for the noble metal, let it not be forgotten 
 that his cautious temper made him err on the safe side, and 
 think it better to save a little dross which could afterwards 
 be purged out, than to permit any of the gold to escape. 
 
 What Boyle did in physics proper in hydrostatics, for 
 example, and in electricity we must pass by. His dis- 
 coveries in these would have won a reputation for a less 
 versatile observer. We must notice him, however, as the 
 self-appointed professor of an important art. We have 
 called him already an Amateur Doctor. It would be fairer 
 
1 3 2 R eligio- Ch emici . 
 
 to style him an Emeritus Physician. Padua or Leyden 
 might have been proud of him, and gave the Doctor's hat 
 to many less accomplished students of medicine. He knew 
 anatomy well, and was often present at dissections. The 
 meagre physiology of his time he had more than mastered, 
 for his air-pump experiments on living animals threw new 
 light on the great functions of respiration and the circula- 
 tion of the blood. The properties of blood and bone, and 
 of the other secretions and tissues of the body, he had made 
 the subjects of repeated analyses. His knowledge of natural 
 history made him familiar with the medicinal virtues of 
 plants and minerals ; and his chemical skill, we have seen, 
 was constantly exerted in preparing novel remedies. He 
 amassed an immense collection of empirical recipes, and 
 tried them on himself, on his friends, or, through the physi- 
 cians he knew, on their patients. It is curious, indeed, to 
 remark his eagerness on this point. Whatever else he and 
 his immense host of correspondents write about, the majo- 
 rity of them have something to say about specifics. Now 
 it is a request that c the incomparable Mr. Boyle' will send 
 them a little of * Ens Veneris.' Then it is an announce- 
 ment from a physician, that he finds c Aqua Limacurn ' 
 (snail- water), or some other abomination, a powerful re- 
 medy. It was a certain way to Boyle's good graces to send 
 him a new recipe, which he acknowledged by presenting 
 the sender in return with one of his choicest formulae, or a 
 packet or phial of some catholicon, as insect or shell collec- 
 tors exchange specimens. Every one assisted him. Wil- 
 liam Penn sent him Red Indian cures ; Locke gathered 
 plants for him at the due season of the year. Boyle came 
 in the end to be gratuitous consulting-physician and apothe- 
 cary-general to a great section of England. Fellows of the 
 Royal College of Physicians did not hesitate to submit cases 
 
Robert Boyle. 233 
 
 to him, and he was a prompt and bold practitioner. In 
 1665, Oxford gave him the honorary degree of Doctor of 
 Physic. 
 
 Doctor Boyle's dispensatory was a catalogue of as vile 
 abominations as ever sick man was compelled to swallow. 
 The compilers of the Pharmacopoeias of his time for he 
 was not a solitary transgressor almost seem to have gone 
 on the principle that the more loathsome the source of a 
 remedy, the more potent was it likely to prove. Let inva- 
 lids of the present day drink with composure their bitterest 
 potions, and be thankful that they are not required, as their 
 forefathers were, to turn cannibals, and masticate powdered 
 human skulls, or the ' ashes of a toad burned alive in a new 
 pot.' The nature of the subject forbids enlargement on 
 what is an important chapter in the history of science, in- 
 teresting to the moralist as well as to the physician, and full 
 of humiliating proofs that we are all Clodios. c What we 
 fear of death* makes every other repulsive thing lose its 
 loathsomeness and horror. Life is gladly purchased on the 
 most hateful terms. If any reader thinks we exaggerate, 
 let him turn to Boyle's ' Usefulness of Philosophy,' which 
 he will find abridged in c Shaw's Boyle,' vol. i. p. 94, and 
 read the paragraph at the bottom of the page. If that does 
 not satisfy him, he can read on. He will not read long, 
 without exclaiming, with King Lear, ' An ounce of civet, 
 good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination.' 
 
 In the occupations we have described, more than forty 
 years wore away ; but before we say anything further con- 
 cerning Boyle's deeds, it will be well to resume his personal 
 history, which we carried no further than the close of his 
 minority. This may best be effected by going back, for a 
 brief space, to the narrative of Philaretus. The reader who 
 knows it only so far as we have yet abridged it, and who is 
 
234 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 familiar with the wan, wasted, melancholy countenance, 
 which looks out from the engraved frontispiece of Boyle's 
 works, will find it difficult to connect that mournful face 
 with the commentary on it, which his autobiography sup- 
 plies. Yet the account is his own, and we have not se- 
 lected passages which should show him to disadvantage. 
 Those which we have taken, and others which are passed 
 over, display him rather as an estimable, than an engaging 
 youth. If he faithfully acknowledges his faults, he is no 
 less careful to point out his virtues, and this with a minute- 
 ness and complacency not prepossessing. 
 
 There were better qualities, however, in Boyle, than 
 those we have yet seen, and they are destined, as well as 
 his weaknesses, to an early ripening. Whilst resident at 
 Geneva, an event occurred, which, as we have already 
 hinted, he was accustomed c to mention as the consider- 
 ablest of his whole life.' To prepare his readers for this 
 occurrence, he tells us, in language quaint, but dignified, 
 that up to the period of its happening, ' though his inclina- 
 tions were ever virtuous, and his life free from scandal, and 
 inoffensive, yet had the piety he was master of already so 
 diverted him from aspiring unto more, that Christ, who 
 long had lain asleep in his conscience (as he once did in 
 the ship), must now, as then, be waked by a storm.' In 
 the dead of night he was roused from his slumbers by the 
 thunders of a fearful tempest. Waking with the alarm 
 that always attends sudden starting from sleep, he gazed 
 in terror at the unceasing flashes of lightning, till he 
 ' began to imagine them the sallies of that fire that must 
 consume the world.' The noise of the heavy rain, and 
 the roaring of the winds, loud enough at times to drown 
 the echo of the thunder, ' confirmed him in his apprehen- 
 sion of the day of judgment being at hand, whereupon the 
 
Robert Boyle. 235 
 
 consideration of his unpreparedness to welcome it, and the 
 hideousness of being surprised by it in an unfit condition, 
 made him resolve and vow, that if his fears were that night 
 disappointed, all his further additions to his life should be 
 more religiously employed.' Boyle does not conceal that 
 ' his fear was (and he blushed it was so) the occasion of 
 his resolution of amendment,' but he also tells us that ' the 
 morning came, and a serener, cloudless sky returned, when 
 he ratified his determination so solemnly that, from that 
 day, he dated his conversion.' This happened when he 
 was some fourteen years old. In after life, Boyle's religion 
 was conspicuously free from the recognition of dread of 
 punishment of crime, or the barter of good works for re- 
 ward, as the grounds of Christian love and obedience. 
 ' Piety,' he says, ' was to be embraced, not so much to gain 
 heaven, as to serve God with.' 
 
 The piety which one grand natural spectacle awakened, 
 another was first to shake to its foundations, and then to 
 confirm. Soon after witnessing the thunder-storm, Boyle 
 made some excursions through Dauphiny and the south of 
 France. Whilst at Grenoble, ' his curiosity at last led him 
 to those wild mountains, where the first and chiefest of 
 the Carthusian abbeys does stand seated ; where the Devil, 
 taking advantage of that deep raving melancholy, so sad a 
 place, his humour, and the strange stories and pictures he 
 found there of Bruno, the father of that order, suggested 
 such strange and hideous distracting doubts of some of the 
 fundamentals of Christianity, that, though his looks did 
 little betray his thoughts, nothing but the forbiddingness of 
 self-despatch hindered his acting it. But after a tedious 
 languishment of many months in this tedious perplexity, at 
 last it pleased God, one day he had received the sacrament, 
 to restore unto him the withdrawn sense of His favour.' 
 
236 Religlo-Chemici. 
 
 In the sketch of Boyle in the Biographic Universelle, of 
 which Cuvier was one of the writers, allusion is made to 
 the resemblance in cast of mind to Pascal, which Boyle's 
 melancholy showed. It has been no such rare thing, how- 
 ever, among students of physics any more than among men 
 of warm hearts and sensitive imaginations, that Boyle and 
 Pascal should stand alone as displaying it. The c Anatomy 
 of Melancholy' has to do with all sorts of men, but chiefly 
 with those possessed of very limited or very great intellec- 
 tual gifts. Minds delicately poised are easily thrown oft" 
 their equilibrium ; like fine balances, which weigh to the 
 almost incredible fraction of a grain, and as a consequence 
 are deranged by the presence of a trace of dust in one scale, 
 and would have a set to one side given them by the down 
 of a moth's wing lying in one pan. Delicate balances, also, 
 are easily strained if overloaded ; and the same law in great 
 measure regulates the mental weighing of all kinds of truth. 
 Students of the physical sciences are often referred to, as if 
 their studies had no tendency to ruffle the spirits or overtask 
 the intellect. Cowper, in one of his letters, referring to 
 the stir which the public ascent of a balloon had occasioned, 
 contrasts his own sadness with the cheerfulness of the philo- 
 sophers too much occupied and delighted with the outer 
 world to brood much inwardly. Nor can it be questioned, 
 that a relish for the natural sciences prevents that mor- 
 bid introversion of spirit which metaphysical speculation, 
 whether of an intellectual or emotional and aesthetical 
 character, tends to encourage, where there is a natural 
 tendency towards inward brooding. But it is the observa- 
 tion of the striking phenomena, not the study of the laws 
 of physical science, that has the enlivening effect. Natu- 
 ralists of the merely observing and describing class, and 
 experimenters, fond only of showy phenomena and dexter- 
 
Robert Boyle. 237 
 
 ous manipulations, are a cheerful, gregarious race, delighted 
 with a new specimen or a new machine, and happiest when 
 imparting their pleasure to others. But when we rise to 
 the great discoverers and lawgivers in physical science, 
 we find a vein of melancholy as apt to show itself as in 
 impassioned poets, or recluse metaphysicians, or mighty 
 painters and musicians. All the great problems in natural 
 science as the nature of heat, of light, of electricity, of 
 gravity and still more all questions connected with life, 
 bring us in the end, and by few steps, face to face with 
 infinity and mystery. Weary nights and days are appointed 
 to him who studies these things. Hope deferred makes 
 the heart sick. Failure saddens and humiliates the spirit, 
 unnerves the intellect, and embitters the temper. Ambi- 
 tion and vanity, pride and the love of power, are in the 
 philosopher's nature as well as in the poet's, and deaden 
 or pervert the love of truth. Brains can be crazed and 
 hearts broken by other disappointments than those which 
 unrequited love occasions ; and in the chemist's laboratory, 
 the astronomer's watch-tower, and the mechanician's work- 
 shop, despair has found many a victim. And where great 
 genius is found unalloyed, or little debased by the meaner 
 qualities of our common nature, and the love of truth burns 
 as a pure light the lumen siccum which Bacon desired in 
 all philosophers, and which failure or disappointment can- 
 not quench the instinctive tendency of the highly-gifted 
 spirit will be to include in its grasp more than even it can 
 compass. The intellect then, though free from all emo- 
 tional bias, may be crushed, as Samson was, by the very 
 triumph of its own strength. We need not wonder, then, 
 that a certain melancholy, easily deepened, is as consonant 
 to the spirit of a Newton as a Shakspere, or that it re- 
 quires but an apparently trifling matter to develop it in 
 
2 j 8 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 either. Boyle's sadness was the fruit partly of his weak- 
 ness, partly of his strength. He was only some seventeen 
 when it first preyed on him ; and the blame of producing 
 it cannot be ascribed to physical science, in which as yet 
 he was but a slender proficient. Neither, however, could 
 physics cure it, for ' never after did these fleeting clouds 
 cease now and then to darken the serenity of his quiet.' 
 He plainly had a natural predisposition to gloom, which a 
 weak body and a roving fancy favoured ; and though his 
 occupations up to his early residence in Geneva were not 
 at all of a melancholy cast, they employed the mind too 
 much, and the body too little, to keep the balance even be- 
 tween them. Boyle had unconsciously, and while yet a 
 youth, adopted the maxim of the friend and chief counsellor 
 of his later years, Archbishop Usher, ' it is better to wear 
 out than to rust out.' The sword had already, and far too 
 soon, begun to pierce the scabbard ! 
 
 However much, nevertheless, bodily or mental idiosyn- 
 crasy, or both, may have predisposed Boyle to melancholy, 
 yet something more, as he believed himself, was needed to 
 give it the intensity and the direction which it assumed. 
 He referred his despair, as we have seen, to Satanic temp- 
 tation. 
 
 This is not a suitable place or occasion for discussing the 
 Scripture doctrine of evil spirits, and their relation to man. 
 But as biographers, we cannot avoid considering the effect 
 which the belief in such a doctrine, as realized in his own 
 experience, had upon Boyle. For the ' clouds returned after 
 the rain,' and the temptation to disbelief and self-destruction 
 returned at intervals during his whole lifetime, though never 
 with the original severity. This fact supplies us with the 
 key to much which we should in vain seek to unravel by 
 searching through all his lengthened essays on heat and cold, 
 
Robert Boyle. 239 
 
 the c Sceptical Chymist,' or the account of the Pneumatical 
 Engine. 
 
 Whatever hypothesis he held as to the cause of his 
 despondency, he could not but have been greatly affected, 
 for the better or the worse, by so dark a temptation as that 
 which haunted him. To see, like Macbeth, wherever he 
 turned, a dagger thirsting for blood, ' the handle towards his 
 hand,' was appalling enough ; but it was worse still when 
 the point turned as if magnetically toward his heart, and the 
 blood for which it thirsted was his own. But when he fur- 
 ther believed that this c dagger of the mind ' was thrust 
 upon him by a fallen Angel, as malignant in purpose as 
 mighty in power, to compel him to be the instrument of his 
 own hopeless damnation, his belief, whether a wise or un- 
 wise one, could not but greatly embitter his agony. Yet 
 whatever evil effect such a faith may be supposed to have 
 had on some of the qualities of Boyle's nature, few ac- 
 quainted with his life will doubt that it put far into the back 
 ground, or blotted out altogether, many of his weaknesses. 
 The remembrance and revisitings of temptations so fearful, 
 could not but sober any mind, which retained its integrity 
 in spite of their assaults. The applaudings of vanity spon- 
 taneously hush themselves, when the reins of self-control 
 are trembling in the hand, and may be dropped from nerve- 
 less fingers at any moment, or flung away in despair. The 
 praises of this world have no attraction for one who has lost 
 his hold upon it, and has come against his will under the 
 dominion of the c powers of the world to come.' Although 
 the ' poor ghost ' had been dumb, and there had been no 
 claim of filial obedience upon Hamlet, or purpose of revenge, 
 we should still have heard him say as he turned from the 
 spectral figure, 
 
240 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 * Remember thee ? 
 Yea, from the table of my memory 
 I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, 
 All saws of books, all forms and pressures past, 
 That youth and observation copied there.' 
 
 One glimpse of the world of spirits introduces a new 
 perspective into that of flesh and blood, and changes the 
 standard by which the value of earthly things is measured. 
 If the dark visitant, however, stole away Boyle's cheerful- 
 ness, he took also with him his pride and vanity, and en- 
 nobled and dignified his character. How compatible even 
 surrender to a despondency bordering at all times on despair 
 is with the clearest good sense and sustained intellectual 
 effort, Cowper's mournful history sufficiently shows. Boyle, 
 moreover, did not surrender. He believed that he was 
 fighting a great spiritual foe, but he was conscious also that 
 he had prevailed. The mingled weakness and greatness of 
 man which Pascal wondered at and mourned over, appear in 
 nothing more than in such a battle. What can be more 
 humiliating to a man, than to have his individuality (the only 
 thing that really is his) intruded on against his will : the 
 chamber of his secret thoughts, which he would not open to 
 those he loves best, and could not if he would, made free to 
 the most hateful of visitors ; the very citadel of Mansoul 
 with its gates flung back upon their hinges, and the daily 
 haunt of evil spirits ? There is no humiliation of man's 
 natural pride greater than this. Yet surely there is no arena 
 on which his God-given greatness is more manifest. 
 
 That, impotent to roll the gates shut again, he should still 
 retain courage to fight against his terrible enemy, and face 
 about and front him, is one of the strangest things in his 
 Spiritual History. If in men's battles, the victory is con- 
 sidered great in proportion to the prowess of the vanquished, 
 
Robert Boyle. 241 
 
 the Christian militant raises the highest war-cry when he 
 exclaims, c We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but against 
 principalities and powers.' 
 
 Boyle's life was thus pre-eminently what every man's life 
 is, but especially every Christian's, a battle and a fight. 
 Melancholy had marked him for her own before his mino- 
 rity was ended, and he returned to England a grave man at 
 twenty. To serve God and to serve man was now his de- 
 liberate and great aim. He did not nurse in secret, and 
 increase by nursing, his sadness, or excuse himself, on the 
 score of indifferent health, from the most laborious tasks. 
 It is true that he kept constantly proclaiming himself a vale- 
 tudinarian or an invalid, and selected the strangest places in 
 his scientific papers for announcing to his readers that he 
 had a distemper in his eyes, a threatening, or a fit of the 
 stone, but all the while he was shaming the most healthy 
 and vigorous of his contemporaries by the number and value 
 of his labours. ' Time, which so many valetudinarians 
 dawdle away, in unnecessary restings and slumbers, Boyle 
 rigidly economized. Tradition reports that in his later 
 days, when his residence in London, and the fame of his 
 name exposed him to countless unprofitable intrusions, he 
 used on occasion to hang out a board with the curt and 
 peremptory announcement upon it, c Mr. Boyle cannot be 
 spoken with to-day.' 
 
 For a considerable period after his second return to Eng- 
 land, Boyle resided chiefly at Stalbridge. In 1652, and 
 again in 1653 he visited Ireland, and remained in it for a 
 considerable period, chiefly engaged in business arrange- 
 ments connected with the estates which his father had left 
 him there. His time would have been spent but unplea- 
 santly in that disturbed country, but for the attentions of 
 Dr. (afterwards Sir William) Petty, celebrated as the founder 
 
242 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 of the modern science of statistics. This accomplished 
 man instructed Boyle in anatomy and physiology. In 1654, 
 the latter returned to England, and took up his abode at 
 Oxford, where, along with Dr. Wallis and others, he kept 
 up the association of ingenious men which afterwards 
 merged into the Royal Society. It was here also that the 
 * great pneumatical engine' was constructed, as already 
 mentioned, in 1658 or 1659. 
 
 After the accession of Charles n. he removed to London 
 and took up his residence with Lady Ranelagh. The king 
 was very courteous to him, and Lord Clarendon urged him 
 to enter into holy orders. Boyle, however, declined acced- 
 ing to his request, partly because he thought that he could 
 serve religion more if it was out of men's power to say of 
 him as they said of the clergy, c that it was their trade, and 
 they were paid for it;' but especially, as Burnet tells us, 
 because he had not ' felt within himself an inward motion 
 to it by the Holy Ghost.' ' So solemnly,' adds the Bishop 
 of Sarum, ' did he judge of sacred matters.' In 1665, he 
 was nominated, by the express desire of Charles n., to the 
 provostship of Eton College, then considered a post of great 
 honour and profit ; but as it could only be filled by one in 
 orders, he declined it. In 1666, he was brought into great 
 public notice in connexion with an Irish gentleman referred 
 to by Dr. Birch, as c the famous Mr. Valentine Greatraks, 
 the Irish Stroker.' He produced marvellous cures by a pro- 
 cess of manipulation closely resembling that practised by the 
 animal magnetists of the present day. Greatraks was an 
 honest and honourable man, and Boyle came forward to 
 attest the reality of his cures. The celebrated astronomer 
 Flamsteed, went to Ireland to be stroked by Greatraks, and 
 was benefited either by the stroking, or a subsequent attack 
 of sea-sickness, or, as he thought, perhaps by both. 
 
Robert Boyle. 243 
 
 In 1680, the Royal Society elected Boyle its president, 
 but ' a great, and perhaps peculiar tenderness in point of 
 oaths,' led him to scruple about coming under the obliga- 
 tions, which by its charter the president must incur, and he 
 declined accepting an honour of which he was so worthy. 
 He refused, indeed, every dignity that was offered him. 
 Charles n., James u., and William in. enjoyed his society 
 and frequently conversed with him, but he sought no favours 
 from any of them. His brothers being all noblemen, he 
 was several times offered a peerage, but he resolutely re- 
 fused it, and his reputation has been all the more abiding. 
 Even Lord Orrery, a man certainly worthy of remem- 
 brance, is not half so well known out of Great Britain 
 as his untitled youngest brother. In modest seclusion he 
 carried on his labours, nor did any very remarkable events 
 occur to diversify the proverbially monotonous life of the 
 philosopher and scholar, till, on the 23d of December 1691, 
 he lost his sister, Lady Ranelagh, whom for nearly fifty 
 years he had loved with that intense affection, which is 
 often seen, after the effervescence of youth is past, to unite 
 brothers to their elder sisters. Boyle had but imperfectly 
 realized the greatness of his loss, when it was more than 
 compensated. Before a week had passed, he was restored 
 to his sister. He died on the 3oth of December 1691, in 
 the sixty-fifth year of his age. 
 
 His character as a natural philosopher may be gathered 
 from what has been stated. Fie practically ignored all 
 speculation on physics which was of earlier date than 
 Bacon's publications. Aristotle he utterly distrusted, and 
 Descartes he would not so much as read. To open his 
 eyes on the outer world, and to read what it taught, with as 
 unbiassed and unfettered a judgment as he could secure, was 
 his great aim. He was a very cautious observer, and was 
 
2 44 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 seldom misled when the whole facts came under his own 
 notice, so that he was eye-witness as well as judge of the 
 nature of the information which a phenomenon or experi- 
 ment furnished. But he was often compelled to deal with 
 other men's alleged facts and observations, and then he went 
 occasionally astray. No later philosopher has described in 
 clearer or more perspicuous language, than Boyle uses, the 
 phenomena he witnessed, the experiments he performed, 
 or the conclusions at which he arrived. Nevertheless, 
 Boyle is intolerably tedious and prolix in all his writings, 
 and often, likewise, very immethodical in his arrangement, 
 and defective in logical precision. He excused himself 
 from systematic discussion of the topics he considered, be- 
 cause the scholastic successors of Aristotle had retarded 
 the progress of science by their refined subtleties and unde- 
 viating rigid adherence to false systems, as if the evil had 
 lain not in the system being baseless, but simply in its being 
 a system. Hence even his Usefulness of Philosophy, which 
 peculiarly called for the most lucid arrangement and orderly 
 discussion, is an undigested rambling discourse, which, 
 instead of resembling the map which a military engineer or 
 railway surveyor would lay down of a country, can be 
 compared only to such a chart as a naturalist would pro- 
 duce, if he marked his course by tracing all the divergings 
 from the main route, into which he was tempted by the 
 winged insects he chased, or the rare plants he turned 
 aside to gather. 
 
 Like the naturalist, Boyle wanders aside to tell of spiders 
 that sting through the soles of men's boots, or to enlist his 
 reader's sympathies in the risk of destruction which a new 
 suit of clothes ran from his spilling, in the dark, some acid 
 upon them, or to recount the vindication of the usefulness 
 of philosophy which was furnished by his smelling out, still 
 
Robert Boyle. 245 
 
 in the dark, a bottle of hartshorn, with which he effaced the 
 stains which the oil of vitriol had produced. Boyle's pro- 
 lixity has done his reputation great injury. It was quite 
 incurable, for besides his avowed and systematic want of 
 system, his early habits of desultory study had unfitted 
 him for the use of a severe logic. No restraining editor, 
 moreover, limited him to so many sheets or pages, nor did 
 any judicious publisher counsel terseness and condensation. 
 The printer could not frighten so wealthy an author by the 
 vision of his bill, and Boyle, a very Marshal Bliicher, with 
 ' Forwards' for his motto, was always in a hurry to be done 
 with what he was at, and on to something else. He acted, 
 accordingly, like the Frenchman, who apologized for writ- 
 ing a long letter because he had not time to write a short 
 one. Boyle wrote a long treatise, and then a long preface 
 apologizing for the length of the treatise, which might have 
 been judiciously shortened in the time spent in writing the 
 apology for its want of brevity. Few of the busy moderns, 
 accordingly, have read a tithe of Boyle's six folios ; no one, 
 probably, within the last hundred and fifty years, but the 
 corrector of the press at which Birch's edition of his works 
 was printed. His volumes have proved a mausoleum, in 
 which his name has been buried, not preserved ; like those 
 Egyptian pyramids, which are so immense, and within so 
 uninviting and inaccessible, that scarcely one man in a cen- 
 tury penetrates into their interiors far enough to read the 
 name and the character of the king whose fame they were 
 raised to commemorate. 
 
 Modern writers, however, if they have read little, have 
 not hesitated in many cases to judge summarily, as if they 
 had read all. A tendency has latterly appeared, especially 
 in this country, to speak of Boyle as if he had been greatly 
 overrated, had been too long remembered, had little intrinsic 
 
246 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 merit, and deserved now to be forgotten. This deprecia- 
 tion of the philosopher is in part the fruit of a reaction 
 against the extravagant praises which his contemporaries 
 and immediate successors bestowed upon him. Those 
 praises, however, are more extravagant in appearance than 
 in reality. A sceptical, critical, practical age like our own, 
 uses fewer words and more subdued expressions, even when 
 its praise is hearty and sincere, than it was the fashion of 
 our forefathers to employ in paying ordinary compliments. 
 If we make this allowance, we shall find little to deduct 
 from the estimate which was formed from the first of 
 Boyle's genius. The able author of the ' Sketch of Boyle,' 
 in the Penny Cyclopedia, has justly observed, that foreigners 
 of the present day are not likely to be biassed in favour of 
 the philosopher by those considerations which may insen- 
 sibly warp the judgment of his countrymen. The biogra- 
 pher in question, accordingly, refers to Mr. Libes, author 
 of the Hist. Phil, des Progres de la Physique, Paris, 1810 ; 
 as devoting a chapter to the consideration of Boyle, in which 
 he dwells on the greatness of his physical discoveries, and 
 the genius which he showed in making them. We may 
 add, that Cuvier has done the same thing in the Biographie 
 Universelle. Hoefer, in his Histoire de la Chlm'ie, Paris, 
 1842, discusses in several chapters Boyle's chemical dis- 
 coveries, and insists on their interest and importance. Pro- 
 fessor Hermann Kopp, of Giessen, in his Geschichte der 
 Chemie, Brunswick, 1843, gives an admirable abstract, of the 
 same nature, but fuller than Hoefer's, and writes in the 
 most cordial and eulogistic terms of Boyle's merits. In 
 truth, since Europe named the air-pump and its vacuum 
 after Boyle, down to the present day, he has had a high 
 place assigned to him by continental philosophers of every 
 nation. Nor have all his countrymen in later times written 
 
Rolert Boyle. 
 
 disparagingly of him. One of the highest living authorities 
 on the subject has pointed out a merit of Boyle's wholly 
 overlooked both by his eulogists and detractors. Sir Wil- 
 liam Hamilton (of Edinburgh) has shown that Boyle was 
 one of the first distinctly to indicate the great catholic divi- 
 sion of the properties of body or matter into c primary and 
 secondary.' Sir William refers to the ' intrinsic importance* 
 of Boyle's classification of corporeal qualities, and adds that 
 * they probably suggested to Locke the nomenclature which 
 he has adopted, but, in adopting, has deformed.' 1 After 
 such a testimony from so eminent a logician, metaphysician, 
 and physicist as Sir William Hamilton, we need add nothing 
 further to prove that we are not labouring under a delusion 
 in claiming for Boyle a high and lasting place among men 
 of science. Those who deny this, have not, we believe, 
 read the works they criticise. The c History of the Air- 
 pump,' already discussed, warrants the charge. Boyle's 
 prolixity may be an excuse for not reading his papers, but 
 it should at the same time bar all criticism of them. They 
 are dry enough reading at times, but they can be got through : 
 nor need all his works be perused to enable us to perceive 
 the amount of precious ore which lies in the midst of heaps, 
 sometimes hills of dross. 
 
 We know no natural philosopher with whom, in quality 
 of intellect, and habits of working, Boyle can exactly be 
 compared. We could compound him, however, pretty 
 well out of Dr. Joseph Black and Dr. Priestley. He had 
 the versatility, energy, and unsystematic mode of carrying 
 on researches of the latter. Priestley and Boyle were con- 
 stantly experimenting on all kinds of things, and made many 
 trials without a definite object, or precise expectation as to 
 the result. Both stood before the oracle, putting endless 
 
 1 Hamilton's edition of the Works of Dr. Thomas Reid, Note D, p. 833. 
 
248 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 unconnected and isolated questions to the priestess, anxious 
 for an answer, but without preconception what the answer 
 would be. Boyle, however, paid much more attention to 
 the reply than Priestley did, and understood its meaning a 
 great deal better. Both were equally ingenious in devising 
 experiments, and successful in performing them, but Priest- 
 ley often totally misunderstood the phenomena he brought 
 to light, and was led completely astray by his own experi- 
 ments. Boyle resembled Black in the accuracy with which 
 he observed results, in the caution with which he drew con- 
 clusions, and the skill with which he interpreted the pheno- 
 mena he witnessed. He had the energy and versatility of 
 Priestley, and the caution and logic of Black, but he was 
 less versatile than Priestley, and more incautious and less 
 logical than Black. 
 
 Boyle, however, was something more than a philosopher. 
 He was a Christian philosopher. Foolish as this world is, 
 it contains many philosophers ; wicked as it is, it contains 
 many Christians ; but not many Christian philosophers. 
 Boyle was one of the few who, from time to time, are 
 granted to us by a kind Providence to make us wiser and 
 better. He was not a Christian on the Sundays, and a 
 philosopher on the week days ; a Christian over his prayer- 
 book, and a philosopher over his air-pump : a Christian in 
 church, and a philosopher in his laboratory ; as too many 
 good and wise men to appearance, altogether, and in reality, 
 too much are. He studied Nature, not as a veil hung be- 
 tween man and God, but as the works of Him, without 
 whom ' was not anything made that was made.' He wor- 
 shipped God, not as an ' unknown God,' such as the Greek 
 philosophers raised an altar to, but as the Living One, the 
 impress of whose finger he had found on every material 
 object he had examined, ' whose ways' he better than most 
 
Robert Boyle. 249 
 
 men knew c were past finding out,' but whose works he 
 had found c all to praise him.' 
 
 Boyle's religious writings, nevertheless, are, not a few of 
 them, altogether unsuited to the taste of the present day. 
 We should be afraid to put into the hands of a lively youth 
 his c Occasional Reflections,' and few devout men of ma- 
 turer years, at all conscious of a sense of the ludicrous, 
 would venture, we think, to peruse them. Yet an Oxford 
 publisher, as the reader may see from the heading of our 
 article, has chosen those very Reflections, which Swift and 
 Butler parodied, as worthy of republication. We neither 
 wish, nor expect for him, many purchasers. 
 
 The depth and sincerity of Boyle's piety, must not be 
 estimated by the want of good taste which appears in his 
 religious writings, considered as literary productions. His 
 life and his deeds are the best testimonies to his Christianity. 
 Setting his claims as a natural philosopher aside, he has 
 always seemed to us to resemble in many respects a gifted 
 man of our own day. Robert Boyle and William Wilber- 
 force had much in common, although a first glance might 
 lead to a very different conclusion. It will be well at once 
 to dispose of the differences between their characters, that 
 the essential likeness in their dispositions and aims, as well 
 as in the events of their history, may distinctly appear. 
 
 Wilberforce was a man of a singularly sunny and genial 
 temperament, with a temper so sweet that no provocation 
 could ruffle it, and a fancy and eloquence so fascinating, 
 that alike in the drawing-room and in the House of Com- 
 mons he was listened to with delight by all. Boyle was a 
 grave, melancholic, formal man, whom Cowley and Dave- 
 nant indeed praise for his wit, but whom Burnet speaks of 
 as having had a certain too precise stiffness of manner even 
 to his friends. He had no gift of speech, but on the other 
 
250 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 hand was afflicted with a stammer, and by nature he was 
 choleric, and subject, as we have seen, to great fits of de- 
 pression. 
 
 Such differences, however, are but skin-deep. The 
 points of resemblance are much more striking than those of 
 difference. Boyle and Wilberforce were alike as the chil- 
 dren of wealthy men, not high in rank by hereditary nobi- 
 lity, but meeting on terms of equality with those who 
 boasted most of ancestral honours. Both were spoiled 
 children, allowed in early life an unwise amount of freedom, 
 and permitted to play with study in a way which they 
 lamented in after life, and the evil effects of which they 
 sought in vain in maturer years to remedy. Both set out 
 on foreign travel, actuated chiefly by the wishes of relatives 
 and the ardour of youthful curiosity. Both underwent, 
 whilst abroad, a great spiritual transformation, which made 
 c all things new' for them, and returned to their own coun- 
 try still very young men, to devote every energy to the 
 extension of Christ's kingdom upon earth. They mingled 
 freely in society, were welcome in every circle, were ad- 
 mired for their gifts and accomplishments, and early in life 
 were famous over Europe, the one as a philosopher, the 
 other as a statesman. Neither of them was what would be 
 called a business man, and both constantly lamented that 
 they had not been trained to habits of closer application, 
 but each contrived, from a strong sense of the value of 
 time, and a deep conviction of duty, to go through, in his 
 own immethodical way, a greater amount of work, than 
 many of the most formal disciples of the red-tape school 
 succeed in accomplishing. Both were indifferent scholars, 
 and had no taste for verbal or philological inquiries, but the 
 belief that the study of the Bible in the original, was the 
 duty of every Christian who could acquire the languages in 
 
Robert Boyle. 251 
 
 which it was written, and a persuasion that such study 
 would repay the student, induced each of them to become 
 a proficient in Greek and Hebrew. In recognition of the 
 importance of having the Scriptures translated into every 
 living tongue, and in earnest advocacy of the claim upon 
 the Church of Christ to send missions to the heathen, both 
 were alike, arid before their age. Their tongues, their 
 pens, their influence with the great, their fortunes, and 
 their sympathies, were all flung into the balance, to make 
 the scale preponderate in favour of the claims of the desti- 
 tute and benighted of mankind upon their brethren. They 
 were alike also Boyle, however, exceeding Wilberforce 
 in the catholicity of their religious opinions. Both were 
 attached but unsectarian members of the Church of Eng- 
 land, counting it good but not perfect. Many of their 
 dearest friends whose Christianity was most exemplary, were 
 Dissenters, and they did not confound dissent with schism. 
 The one was the friend of Baxter and Penn, the other of 
 Jay and Clarkson. May such men abound, and break 
 down ' the middle wall of partition ' which needlessly sepa- 
 rates the true Christians of one denomination from another ! 
 Our sketch is completed. In labours manifold, in the 
 founding of a lecture which should vindicate the claims of 
 Christianity upon mankind, 1 in liberal gifts to every benevo- 
 
 1 We cannot deny ourselves the pleasure, and its author the justice, of adverting 
 to one of the most recent works which has appeared in connexion with the Boyle 
 Lecture, The Religions of the World, by the Rev. F. Maurice. This treatise is 
 perhaps less known in the circles of Nonconformity than it deserves to be. The 
 few minds in England that are attentive to the development of our higher theolo- 
 gical literature, know Mr. Maurice to be one of the most accomplished writers of 
 the age, in all topics that respect the theory of religious belief, and the relations of 
 Christianity to philosophical systems. The work to which we have referred more 
 than sustains his high reputation. A less speculative mind might perhaps object 
 to it, too great a fondness for the discovery of system and order in the disjecta 
 membra of non-Christian creeds and superstitions, and also a tendency shared by 
 
252 Religio- ChemicL 
 
 lent undertaking, in large secret charities to poor scholars, 
 and the destitute of every class, Boyle spent his fortune and 
 his time. He looked forward to death with Christian com- 
 posure and fortitude, but he trembled as a man. He had a 
 very sensitive body, and was the victim of a cruel disorder, 
 which he feared might rise to such an intensity in his last 
 moments, as to overwhelm his courage and his faith. But 
 it pleased God, as it has often pleased Him, to disappoint 
 the fears of His doubting yet faithful servant. He had 
 scarcely taken to his bed before the curtain fell. The 
 agonies which should prove unendurable were never felt. 
 The bitterness of death was not tasted. The awful tempter 
 who had poisoned the happiness of a long life, quailed before 
 the benignant presence of Him who is with His people even 
 unto the end. Life ebbed away, and its dying murmur 
 uttered only the peaceful sound, ' He giveth his beloved 
 sleep.' 
 
 him with the whole school in the Church of England to which he belongs, to 
 shift the centre of Christianity from the atonement to the incarnation of the 
 Redeemer j but every candid person will be pleased with the spirit of deep and 
 liberal sympathy, in combination with extensive learning, with which he has 
 divined not less than investigated the peculiarities of the religions which prevail 
 in partibus infidelium, and every Christian will rejoice in his able development of 
 the resources of the gospel as the religion of humanity, which incorporates all that 
 is natural, and sets aside all that is perverse in other beliefs, and that not by a cri- 
 tical eclecticism, but by a creative inspiration. We willingly pay this tribute to an 
 able scholar, a genial thinker, a liberal divine, who has not been spoiled by the 
 philosophy and vain deceit in which he has been much conversant, and a simple 
 and graceful writer, who amid the current sophistication of the philosophic style 
 has not yet learned to be ashamed of the English language. 
 
WOLLASTON. 1 
 
 WILLIAM HYDE WOLLASTON, one of the ablest and 
 most renowned of English chemists and natural philoso- 
 phers, was born August 6, 1766, and died in December 
 1828. Seventeen years have passed away since his death, 
 and yet no biography has appeared, although he has as wide 
 a reputation among men of science as Sir Humphry Davy, 
 of whom lives innumerable have been written. This has 
 in part arisen from the comparatively retired life which 
 Wollaston led, and the reserve and austerity of his cha- 
 racter. He was not, like his great contemporary, a public 
 lecturer to a highly popular institution, and thereby an ob- 
 ject of interest, not only to men of science, but likewise to 
 students of literature, and even to people of fashion. His 
 life was spent in his laboratory, from which even his inti- 
 mate friends were excluded : and the results of his labours 
 were made known only by essays, published for the most 
 part in the Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 
 His discoveries, however, were so many, and of so impor- 
 tant a kind, and made his name so widely known, that we 
 cannot but wonder that no biography of him has yet ap- 
 
 1 (i.) The Bakerian Lecture for 1828. On a Method of rendering Platina 
 malleable. By W. H. Wollaston, M.D., V.P.R.S. 
 
 (2.) Philosophical Transactions for 1829. A Description of a Microscopic 
 Doublet 5 On a Method of Comparing the Light of the Sun with that of the Fixed 
 Stars; On the Water of the Mediterranean. By W. H. Wollaston, M.D., 
 V.P.R.S. 
 
254 R eligio- Chemici. 
 
 peared. Two of his publications, the one containing the 
 description of his reflecting goniometer, the other explain- 
 ing a process by which platina may be rendered malleable, 
 would alone have entitled Wollaston to a place in the roll 
 of natural philosophers worthy of lengthened remembrance. 
 Had he been a German, some patient, painstaking fellow- 
 countryman would long ago have put on record all that 
 could be learned concerning his personal history. Had he 
 been a Frenchman, an eloquent Dumas or Arago would 
 have read his eloge to the assembled men of science of the 
 French capital, in language acceptable to the most learned, 
 and intelligible to the most unscientific of men. His fate as 
 an Englishman, is to have his memory preserved (otherwise 
 than by his own works) only by one or two meagre and 
 unauthenticated sketches, which scarcely tell more than 
 that he was born, lived some sixty years, published certain 
 papers, and died. 
 
 With the exception of some faint and imperfect glimpses 
 of an austere taciturn solitary, perfecting wonderful dis- 
 coveries in a laboratory hermetically sealed against all in- 
 truders, we learn almost nothing of the individuality of the 
 worker. A few anecdotes, incidentally preserved in the 
 lives of some of his contemporaries, contain nearly that has 
 been published concerning his personal history. 
 
 We have been informed that, soon after Wollaston's 
 death, all the documents and materials necessary for his 
 biography were placed in the hands of a gentleman well 
 qualified for the task of writing it. The expected work, 
 however, has not appeared, and, so far as we are aware, no 
 progress has been made towards its production. We trust 
 that the idea of publishing a life of Wollaston has not been 
 abandoned, and that we shall yet see his personal history 
 placed on permanent record. 
 
The Life of Bellas ton. 255 
 
 Meanwhile, we think we shall do our readers a service 
 by bringing before them such a sketch of the philosopher 
 as the scanty materials at our disposal enable us to furnish. 
 Imperfect and fragmentary as it necessarily is, it will give 
 them some idea of a very remarkable man. An experienced 
 crystallographer can tell from a few sandlike grains, or a 
 single detached and rounded angle, that the crystal of which 
 they once were parts was a perfect cube, a many-sided 
 prism, or a symmetrical pyramid. The geologist can infer 
 from a tooth or a claw much concerning the whole animal 
 to which it belonged. We trust that our readers will in 
 like manner be able to piece our biographical fragments to- 
 gether into c one entire and perfect chrysolite :' and that 
 they will find the palaeontologist's guiding mottos, ' Ex 
 ungue LeonemJ ' Ex pede HerculemJ lead them to the con- 
 clusion that they are dealing with one of the megatheria 
 among men of science. 
 
 William Hyde Wollaston belonged to a Staffordshire 
 family, distinguished for several generations by their suc- 
 cessful devotion to literature and science. His great-grand- 
 father, the Rev. William Wollaston, was author of a work 
 famous in its day, entitled, The Religion of Nature Delineated. 
 His father, the Rev. Francis Wollaston of Chiselhurst, in 
 Kent, from his own observations, made an extensive cata- 
 logue of the northern circumpolar stars, which, with an 
 account of the instruments employed, and tables for the 
 reductions, was published under the title of Fasciculus Astro- 
 nomicuS) in 1800. 
 
 The subject of our memoir was the second son of the 
 astronomer, and of Althea Hyde, of Charter-house Square, 
 London. He was one of seventeen children, and was born 
 at East Dereham, a village some sixteen miles from Nor- 
 wich, on the 6th of August 1766. After the usual prepara- 
 
256 R eligio- Chem id. 
 
 tory education, he went to Cambridge, and entered at Caius 
 College, where he made great progress. In several of the 
 sketches published of him, he is said to have been senior 
 wrangler of his year ; but this is a mistake, arising out of 
 the fact, that a person of the same surname, Mr. Francis 
 Wollaston, of Sidney Sussex College, gained the first place 
 in 1783. Dr. Wollaston did not graduate in arts, but took 
 the degree of M.B. in 1787, and that of M.D. in 1793. 
 He became a Fellow of Cains College soon after taking his 
 degree, and continued one till his death. At Cambridge he 
 resided till 1789, and astronomy appears to have been his 
 favourite study there, although there is evidence to show 
 that at this time, as at a later period, he was very catholic 
 in his scientific tastes. He probably inherited a predilec- 
 tion for the study of the heavenly bodies from his father, 
 and it was increased by his intimacy with the late astrono- 
 mer-royal of Dublin, Dr. Brinkley, now Bishop of Cloyne, 
 and with Mr. Pond, formerly astronomer-royal of Green- 
 wich, with whom he formed a friendship at Cambridge 
 which lasted through life. 
 
 In 1789, he settled at Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk, and 
 commenced to practise as a physician, but with so little 
 success, probably on account of the peculiar gravity and 
 reserve of his manner, that he soon left the place and re- 
 moved to London. He succeeded, however, no better in 
 the metropolis. Soon after reaching it, a vacancy occurred 
 in St. George's Hospital, and Wollaston became candidate 
 for the office of physician there. The place was gained, 
 however, by his principal opponent, Dr. Pemberton, * who, 
 it is said, either by superior interest, or, as is commonly 
 supposed, by his more pleasing and polished manners, ob- 
 tained the situation.' It is added in several of the notices 
 of Wollaston, c that on hearing of his failure, in a fit of 
 
The Life of Wollaston. 257 
 
 pique he declared that he would abandon the profession, 
 and never more write a prescription, were it for his own 
 father.' This statement must be received with hesitation. 
 So staid and sedate a person as Wollaston was, is not likely 
 to have given utterance to the hasty and intemperate ex- 
 pressions attributed to him ; and so prudent a man would 
 not have bound himself by a rash vow to abandon his pro- 
 fession, unless he had seen the prospect of occupying him- 
 self more pleasantly and profitably in another way. This 
 account, indeed, is in direct contradiction to another ; 
 which is so far authentic, and entitled to greater credi- 
 bility, that it is contained in the report of the Council of 
 the Astronomical Society of Great Britain, presented at the 
 anniversary meeting in 1829. In the obituary notice of 
 Wollaston given in that report, it is mentioned, ' that he 
 continued to practise in London till the end of the year 
 1800, when an accession of fortune determined him to re- 
 linquish a profession he never liked, and devote himself 
 wholly to science.' 
 
 He had no occasion to regret the change, even in a 
 pecuniary point of view, the only one in which his aban- 
 donment of medicine was likely to have injured him. His 
 process for rendering crude platina malleable, which con- 
 ferred so great a service on analytical chemistry, is said to 
 have brought him more than thirty thousand pounds, and 
 he is alleged to have made money by several of his minor 
 discoveries and inventions. 
 
 The remainder of Wollaston's life must be referred to in 
 terms like to those in which the sacred writer of the Book 
 of Chronicles finishes his brief record of each Jewish king : 
 ' Now the rest of his acts, and his deeds first and last, are 
 written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah.' 
 What the book of the Jewish kings is to their lives, the 
 
 R 
 
2 5 8 Kellgio- Chemici. 
 
 archives and records of the Royal Society are to our scien- 
 tific men. Dr. Wollaston became a fellow of that Society 
 in 1793, and was made second secretary in 1806. He was 
 for many years vice-president, and in 1820, between the 
 death of Sir J. Banks and the election of Sir H. Davy, he 
 occupied the president's chair. There were not a few, 
 indeed, among the influential members of the Society who 
 would have preferred him to Davy as permanent chairman; 
 but Wollaston having signified his fixed intention to decline 
 competition, gave the whole weight of his influence to 
 Davy, and the latter was elected. 
 
 His communications to the Royal Society are thirty-nine 
 in number, and, along with his contributions to other scien- 
 tific journals, refer to a greater variety of topics than those 
 of any other English chemist, not excepting Cavendish. 
 In addition to essays on strictly chemical subjects, they in- 
 clude papers on important questions in astronomy, optics, 
 mechanics, acoustics, mineralogy, crystallography, physio- 
 logy, pathology, and botany, besides one on a question con- 
 nected with the fine arts, and several describing mechanical 
 inventions. 
 
 We shall endeavour to give the reader some idea of 
 certain of the more important of these papers, discussing 
 them, however, not in their chronological order, but ac- 
 cording to a classified list. 
 
 Five are on questions of physiology and pathology, and 
 do not admit of popular discussion. The most curious of 
 these is a paper on ' Semi-decussation of the optic nerves,' 
 and single vision with two eyes. Besides its interest as a 
 scientific essay, it is important as having been occasioned 
 by speculations concerning the cause of a remarkable form 
 of blindness from which Wollaston suffered, during which 
 he saw c only half of every object, the loss of sight being in 
 
The Life of Wollaston. 259 
 
 both eyes towards the left, and of short duration only/ 
 This peculiar state of vision proved in the end to have been 
 symptomatic of a disease of the brain, of which he died. 
 
 Eight or nine papers are on optics, but our limits will not 
 allow us to discuss them. 
 
 Wollaston published two papers on astronomy, one c On 
 a Method of Comparing the Light of the Sun with that of 
 the Fixed Stars,' of which we can only give the title ; the 
 other is, c On the Finite Extent of the Atmosphere,' and is 
 one of the most interesting physical essays on record. It 
 was published in January. 1822, in the May preceding which, 
 a transit of Venus over the sun's disk took place. Wollas- 
 ton was induced in consequence to make observations on 
 this rare and interesting phenomenon. None of the larger 
 observatories were provided with suitable instruments for 
 watching it ; but our philosopher, with that singular inge- 
 nuity both in devising and in constructing apparatus which 
 we shall afterwards find to have been one of his great charac- 
 teristics, succeeded by a few happy contrivances in making 
 a small telescope completely serve the purpose. His special 
 object in watching the passage of Venus, was to ascertain 
 whether or not the sun has an atmosphere like that of the 
 earth. He satisfied himself that it has not, and embodied 
 his results in the paper, the title of which we have given. 
 
 It is a very curious attempt to decide a most difficult che- 
 mical problem by reference to an astronomical fact. The 
 chemical question is, do the elements of compounds consist 
 of indivisible particles or atoms, or do they not ? It is a 
 branch of the great problem which has occupied physics 
 and metaphysics since the dawn of speculation, in vain 
 attempts to decide either way, viz., is matter finitely or 
 infinitely divisible ? Our author undertakes to show, not 
 only that this difficulty may be solved, but that in fact it 
 
260 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 was solved, though no one was aware of it, as early as the 
 discovery of the telescope, and Galileo's first observation of 
 the eclipses of Jupiter's moons. 
 
 His mode of reasoning is as follows. If our air consist 
 of an infinite number of particles, then as these are known 
 to be self-repulsive, there can be no limit to the amount of 
 its expansion. It will spread out into space, on every side, 
 arid be found surrounding each of the heavenly bodies. 
 
 If, on the other hand, the atmosphere consist of a finite 
 number of molecules or atoms, it will find a limit at no 
 great distance from the earth. For the force of repulsion 
 between the atoms will rapidly diminish as they recede from 
 each other, till it become insufficient to oppose the counter- 
 acting force of gravity. The air will then cease to expand, 
 and present a row of bounding molecules, prevented from 
 falling towards the earth by the repulsion of the particles 
 between it and them, and from receding from the earth by 
 their own weight. The conclusion from this reasoning is, 
 that if astronomy can show that any one of the heavenly 
 bodies has not an atmosphere of the same nature as ours, 
 chemistry will be entitled, and indeed compelled, to infer, 
 first, that our atmosphere, and then that all matter, consists 
 of finitely divisible particles or true atoms. 
 
 The astronomical problem is easily and speedily solved. 
 The moon is too near us, to permit of observations of the 
 necessary kind being made, as to her possession of an atmos- 
 phere similar in constitution to ours : but according to tele- 
 scopic observation, she is a naked globe. The phenomena 
 presented when Venus or Mercury passes close to the sun, 
 certify that he has no atmosphere like that of the earth ; 
 but his high temperature, and its possible effect on an 
 atmosphere, if he have one, somewhat lessen the value of 
 the fact. Jupiter, however, and his five moons, admit of 
 
The Life of Wollaston. 261 
 
 observations which make it certain that our aerial envelope 
 has not reached to that heavenly body. 1 When his satel- 
 lites suffer eclipse by passing behind him, they appear, to 
 a spectator on the earth, to move across his disk till they 
 reach its edge, when they instantaneously disappear. When 
 they reappear after moving round him, they emerge in a 
 moment from behind his body, and start at once into full 
 view. Had Jupiter an atmosphere like ours, the occulta- 
 tion of his satellites would not occur as it is observed to do. 
 Our sun, when he sinks below the horizon, remains visible 
 to us by the light bent up or refracted to our eyes, through 
 the transparent air, and twilight slowly darkens into night. 
 In like manner, long before the rising sun would be seen if 
 our globe were naked, the air sends up his rays to our eyes, 
 and he becomes visible. If Jupiter had an atmosphere like 
 that of the earth, each of his moons, instead of disappearing 
 at once behind his disk, would exhibit a twilight recession, 
 and slowly wane away ; when it returned, it would be 
 seen much sooner, after being lost sight of, than it is at 
 present, and would gradually wax brighter and brighter till 
 it came fully into view. In other words, the atmosphere of 
 Jupiter would send back the light of the satellite to us, after 
 the latter disappeared behind the planet ; and would send 
 forward that light before the moon reappeared. Wollaston 
 shows that, in the case last supposed, the fourth satellite 
 would never be eclipsed, but would remain visible when at 
 the very back of the planet. 
 
 1 The reader will observe that the argument is based, not on the fact of the 
 heavenly bodies lacking atmospheres, which some of them may possess, but on 
 their wanting atmospheres of the same nature as ours. We cannot apply chemistry 
 to ascertain whether oxygen and nitrogen, or the other gases of our atmosphere, 
 envelop distant globes ; but we can bring optics to discover whether a power to 
 refract light such as our air possesses, exists around any of these spheres. From 
 the text it will be seen that no such power has been observed in any case. 
 
262 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 It is certain, then, that the earth's atmosphere is limited, 
 and, according to Wollaston, it is equally sure that matter 
 is only finitely divisible. 
 
 The paper we are discussing excited great attention 
 among men of science ; and for a long period, though few 
 implicitly assented to the validity of the argument, no one 
 appeared able to detect any fallacy in its reasoning. It was 
 commented on by Faraday, Graham, Turner, and Daubeny, 
 as an important contribution to chemistry ; and referred to 
 by Dumas as the only attempt which had been made in 
 modern times to decide by physics the question of the finite 
 or infinite divisibility of matter. More recently, it has been 
 shown that the fact that the atmosphere is limited will not 
 justify the conclusion which Wollaston deduced from it. 
 
 It has been suggested by Dumas, following out the views 
 of Poisson, that the low temperature which is known to 
 prevail in the upper regions of the atmosphere, may be such 
 at its boundary as to destroy the elasticity of the air, and 
 even to condense it into a liquid or freeze it into a solid. 
 The outer envelope of our atmosphere is thus supposed to be 
 a shell of frozen air. If this view be just, our atmosphere 
 is limited, not because it consists of atoms, but simply be- 
 cause a great cold prevails in its upper regions. 
 
 Professor Whewell has shown that Wollaston was not 
 entitled to assume that the law which connects the density 
 of the air with the compressing force is the same at the 
 limit of the atmosphere as it is near the surface of the earth. 
 He suggests a different law which may prevail, and which 
 would terminate the atmosphere without the assumption of 
 atoms. 
 
 Lastly, it has been pointed out, that though all Wollas- 
 ton's postulates were granted him, they would only entitle 
 him to infer that the atmosphere consists of a finite number 
 
The Life of Wollaston. 263 
 
 of repelling molecules. To establish this, is to establish 
 nothing. We are still on the threshold of the argument. 
 Each molecule supplies as good a text whereon to discuss 
 the question of divisibility, as the whole atmosphere out of 
 which it was taken. The point which most of all demanded 
 proof, namely, that the molecule was an atom, was the very 
 one which Wollaston took for granted. 
 
 Beautiful, then, and certain as are the astronomical facts 
 brought to light by Wollaston, they supply no decision of 
 the question of the divisibility of matter. That problem 
 still presents the same twofold aspect of difficulty which it 
 has ever exhibited. If we affirm that matter is infinitely 
 divisible, we assert the apparent contradiction, that a finite 
 whole contains an infinite number of parts. If, pressed by 
 this difficulty, we seek to prove that the parts are as finite 
 as the whole they make up, we fail in our attempt. We 
 can never exhibit the finite factors of our finite whole ; and 
 the so-called atom always proves as divisible as the mass 
 out of which it was extracted. Finity and infinity must 
 both be believed in ; but here, as in other departments of 
 knowledge, we cannot reconcile them. 
 
 The greater number of Wollaston's strictly chemical 
 papers, with the exception of those referring to physiology 
 and pathology, are devoted to the exposition of points con- 
 nected with the chemistry of the metals. He was the dis- 
 coverer of palladium and rhodium, once interesting only as 
 chemical curiosities, but now finding important uses in the 
 arts. He discovered, also, the identity of columbium and 
 tantalum. He was the first to recognise the existence of 
 metallic titanium in the slags of iron furnaces ; and he is 
 the deviser of the important process by which platina is ren- 
 dered malleable. He published, also, analyses of meteoric 
 iron, and showed that potash exists in sea water. 
 
264 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 The majority of the essays in which these discoveries 
 were made known, are of too limited and technical a char- 
 acter to admit of notice in this paper. There is one of 
 them, however, that ' on a process by which platina may 
 be rendered malleable,' which cannot be dismissed without 
 a word of explanation. 
 
 It must seem curious to a general reader, that much 
 value should be attached to a mere metallurgical process, 
 however ingenious. He will be further perplexed by learn- 
 ing that the Royal Society, passing over Wollaston's claims 
 to reward, as the author of important speculative, and purely 
 scientific papers, selected this essay as the object of their 
 special commendation. The strong words used by the 
 Council of the Society are, * Your Council have deemed 
 themselves bound to express their strong approbation of this 
 interesting memoir by awarding a royal medal to its author, 
 and they anticipate with confidence a general approbation 
 of what they have done.' It may help the reader to under- 
 stand why the paper in question is esteemed so highly if he 
 be made aware of the following facts. 
 
 Among other bodies which the alchemists of the middle 
 ages thought it possible to discover, and accordingly sought 
 after, was a Universal Solvent, or Alkahest as they named 
 it. This imaginary fluid was to possess the power of dis- 
 solving every substance, whatever its nature, and to reduce 
 all kinds of matter to the liquid form. It does not seem to 
 have occurred to these ingenious dreamers to consider, that 
 what dissolved everything, could be preserved in nothing. 
 Of what shall we construct the vessel in which a fluid is to 
 be kept, which hungers after all things, and can eat its way 
 through adamant as swiftly as water steals through walls of 
 ice ? A universal solvent must require an equally universal 
 non solubile in which it may be retained for use. 
 
The Life of Wollaston. 265 
 
 The modern chemist's desire has lain in the opposite 
 direction from that of his alchemical forefather. It is the 
 non solublle, not the solvent, that he has sought after, and 
 Wollaston supplied him with that in malleable platina. 
 Long before the close of last century, the chemical analyst 
 found the re-agents he had occasion to make use of, alka- 
 hests or universal solvents enough, for the vessels in which 
 he could contain them. For the greater number of pur- 
 poses, glass and porcelain resist sufficiently the action of 
 even the strongest acids, alkalies, and other powerful sol- 
 vents. In some cases, however, they are attacked by these, 
 and cannot be employed in accurate analysis. Whenever, 
 moreover, it is necessary to subject bodies to a high tem- 
 perature along with active re-agents, as, for example, in 
 the fusion of minerals with alkalies, porcelain can seldom 
 be employed, and is often worse than useless. 
 
 It was in vain that chemists had recourse to silver and 
 gold, as substitutes for the insufficient clay in the construc- 
 tion of their crucibles. These metals melt at compara- 
 tively low temperatures, and, before a sufficient heat can 
 be attained to fuse the more refractory substances enclosed 
 in them, they run into liquids, and the crucible and its con- 
 tents are lost in a useless slag. 
 
 In consequence of this insufficiency of his tools, the 
 analytical chemist was brought to a complete stand. Whole 
 departments of his science lay around him unexplored and 
 unconquered, tempting him by their beauty and their pro- 
 mise. He could only, however, fold his arms and gaze 
 wistfully at them, like a defeated engineer before a city 
 which his artillery and engines have failed to subdue. 
 
 It was at this crisis that Wollaston came forward to put 
 a new weapon into the hands of the chemical analyst. 
 Several years before he turned his attention to the subject, 
 
266 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 scattered grains of a brilliant metal had been found in the 
 sands of certain of the South American rivers. To this, 
 from its resemblance to silver, or in their language Plata, 
 the Spaniards gave the name of Platina, or little silver. 
 This metal was found to resist the action of nearly every 
 substance except Aqua Regia ; to suffer no change, nor to 
 become rusted by protracted exposure to the atmosphere ; 
 and to be perfectly infusible by the most powerful forge or 
 furnace. 
 
 Here, then, was a substance for the chemist's crucible, 
 could a method of working it only be discovered. But the 
 very properties which made its value certain, if it were 
 wrought into vessels, forbade its being easily fashioned into 
 them. It occurred in nature only in small grains, which 
 could not be melted, so that it was impossible, as with 
 most other metals, to convert it into utensils by fusion. 
 Neither was it possible by hammering to consolidate the 
 grains into considerable masses, so that vessels could be 
 beaten out of them, for the crude metal is very impure. 
 Accordingly, it happened, that for years after the value 
 of platina had been discovered, it could not be turned to 
 account. Whole cargoes of the native metal, although it 
 is now six times more costly than silver, are said to have 
 lain unpurchased for years in London, before Wollaston 
 devised his method of working it. 
 
 That method was founded upon the property which 
 platina possesses of agglutinating at a high temperature, 
 though not melted, in the way iron does, so that, like 
 that metal, it can be welded, and different pieces forged 
 into one. This property could not, however, be directly 
 applied to the native grains, owing to their impurity and 
 irregularity in form. 
 
 Wollaston commenced by dissolving the metal in aqua 
 
The Life of Wollaston. 267 
 
 regia ; purified it whilst in solution from the greater number 
 of accompanying substances which alloyed it ; and then, by 
 the addition of sal ammoniac, precipitated it as an insoluble 
 compound with chlorine and muriate of ammonia. When 
 this compound was heated, these bodies were dissipated in 
 vapour, and left the platina in the state of a fine black 
 powder, which was further purified by washing with water. 
 
 It was only further necessary to fill a proper mould with 
 this powder well moistened, and to subject it to powerful 
 compression. By this process the powder cohered into a 
 tolerably solid mass, which was gently heated by a charcoal 
 fire, so as to expel the moisture and give it greater tenacity. 
 It was afterwards subjected to the intensest heat of a wind- 
 furnace, and hammered while hot, so as completely to 
 agglutinate its particles, and convert it into a solid ingot. 
 This ingot or bar could then be flattened into leaf, drawn 
 into wire, or submitted to any of the processes by which 
 the most ductile metals are wrought. 
 
 We have passed over unnoticed many practical minutiae 
 essential to the success of Wollaston's process. The reader 
 is more concerned to know that the platina crucible has 
 been one of the chief causes of the rapid improvement which 
 chemistry has recently undergone, and that it is an indis- 
 pensable instrument in the laboratory. The costliness of 
 the metal has not forbidden its application to manufacturing 
 operations even on the largest scale. In the oil of vitriol 
 works, stills of platina are made use of for distilling sul- 
 phuric acid, each of which, though holding only a few gal- 
 lons, costs above a thousand pounds. A coinage of platina 
 was introduced into the Russian dominions, which possess 
 valuable supplies of its ores ; but though roubles arid other 
 coins struck in it, occasionally reach this country as curio- 
 sities, we understand that the coinage has been withdrawn 
 
268 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 by the imperial government, in consequence of the fluctu- 
 ations that occur in the value of the metal. 
 
 In our own country, from the great consumption of pla- 
 tina in chemical processes, its value has rapidly risen even 
 within the last few months ; but it is constantly shifting. 1 
 Nothing but its rarity and costliness prevent its application 
 to the construction of every kind of culinary vessel, for 
 which its purity, cleanliness, and enduringness especially fit 
 it. A thousand other uses would be found for it, if it were 
 more abundant. 
 
 Were it now the custom to honour men after death 
 according to the fashion of the Greeks and Romans, Wol- 
 laston's ashes would be consigned to a gigantic platina 
 crucible, as to a befitting and imperishable sepulchral urn. 
 
 His other chemical papers are all important. One of 
 them, c on the chemical production and agency of electricity,' 
 proved, by singularly ingenious and beautiful experiments, 
 that identity of voltaic and friction electricity, which Fara- 
 day has since confirmed by still more decisive trials. The 
 others had reference chiefly to the atomic theory, which 
 Wollaston was a great means of introducing to the favour- 
 able notice of chemists. One was ' On superacid and sub- 
 acid salts,' and contained one of the earliest and most con- 
 vincing proofs which can be given of the existence of such a 
 law of multiple proportion, as Dalton had announced. The 
 other, on ' A synoptical scale of chemical equivalents,' first 
 brought the laws of combination within the reach of the 
 student and manufacturer. 
 
 1 Platina costs at present [1846], in the state of ingot or bar, from 305. to 35*. 
 per ounce, wholesale. Manufactured articles from 325. to 425. per ounce, also whole- 
 sale. The retail prices are from 55. to ics. higher. Virgin silver sells at 53. 8d. 
 per ounce, wholesale ; at 93. per ounce, retail, when manufactured. Sterling silver 
 is worth 45. i id. per ounce. 
 
The Life of H'ollaston. 269 
 
 Wollaston published three papers on the shapes of crys- 
 tals, and on the mode of measuring them. No branch of 
 science is less inviting to the general student than crystallo- 
 graphy. Nevertheless, we must be allowed to refer briefly 
 to one of Wollaston's essays on that subject. The most 
 superficial sketch of the philosopher whose works we are 
 considering, would be inexcusably defective if it passed 
 it by. 
 
 The paper we refer to is entitled, c Description of a 
 Reflective Goniometer, ' and next to that containing the 
 account of the platina process, is perhaps Wollaston's most 
 important contribution to science. It is much more diffi- 
 cult, however, to convey an idea of its value, than it was 
 in the case of that essay. 
 
 There are no bodies, perhaps, more interesting to a 
 greater number of persons than crystals. The rarer native 
 ones which we name gems, rank with the precious metals 
 in expressing by the smallest bulk the greatest commercial 
 value. The precious stones have been hallowed in the 
 minds of many from their earliest days, by the terms in 
 which they are alluded to in the Bible. The lavish use 
 made of them in adorning the dress of the Jewish high- 
 priest ; the manifold references to them in the books of the 
 prophets, and in the more impassioned writings of the Old 
 Testament ; and most of all the striking and magnificent 
 way in which they are referred to by St. John as types of 
 the glories of the world to come, must satisfy even the most 
 careless reader of the Scriptures, that God has marked them 
 out as emblems of indestructibility, rarity, worth, beauty, 
 and purity. Their appropriateness for this purpose must 
 strike every one. The painter has counted it a triumph of 
 his art to imitate even imperfectly their colours and bril- 
 liancy. Poets have all loved to sing of them. Beauty in 
 
270 Religio- Che mid. 
 
 every age and clime, barbaric and civilized, however much 
 she has loved caprice in other things, and has complained 
 of ennui and satiety, seems never to have tired of her 
 rubies and emeralds, or to have grown weary of admiring 
 her ' family diamonds.' 
 
 And if the symbolical, aesthetical, fictitious and commer- 
 cial value of crystals has been great, their worth to the man 
 of science has not been small. The mineralogist counts 
 them the most precious treasures of his cabinet. The 
 geologist defines and marks out rocks by them. The elec- 
 trician has detected curious phenomena by means of their 
 aid. The investigator of the laws of heat finds them of 
 indispensable service in studying his subject. The optician 
 is indebted to them for the greatest generalization of his 
 science, and for the discovery of many of its most delight- 
 ful, though most intricate departments. Recently they 
 have been declared to present remarkable and hitherto un- 
 suspected relations to magnetism. The chemist considers 
 a knowledge of crystallography absolutely requisite, not 
 merely as enabling him to identify substances without the 
 trouble of analysing them, but likewise as unfolding analo- 
 gies of the greatest importance in relation to the classifica- 
 tion of chemical compounds. Medical men have discovered 
 that, in many dangerous disorders, crystals show themselves 
 in the fluids of the body, and now study their shapes with 
 the utmost care as a means of detecting and alleviating 
 disease. Finally, the greatest mathematicians have counted 
 it a worthy occupation to investigate the forms and geo- 
 metrical relations of crystals. We need only remind our 
 scientific readers of the labours of Huygens, Young, Fres- 
 nel, Arago, Brewster, Sir William Hamilton of Dublin, 
 Herschel, Mohs, Weiss, Mitscherlich, Faraday, not to 
 mention a multitude of others, to satisfy them that we have 
 
The Life of Wollaston. 27 1 
 
 not overstated matters. The undulatory hypothesis of light, 
 the laws of its double refraction, and those of its polariza- 
 tion, have been suggested or discovered by observations 
 with crystals. The same remark applies to the laws of the 
 radiation and polarization of heat, and with limitations might 
 be extended to other branches of natural philosophy. There 
 is not, indeed, a single physical science which has not an 
 interest in crystallography. 
 
 From this brief statement it will appear, that nearly every 
 class of scientific men was certain to gain by the invention 
 of an instrument which promised greatly to facilitate, and 
 to render more accurate, the study of crystals. We will 
 not say that the poet, the painter, or the beauty owed Wol- 
 laston any thanks. They did not, at least, immediately ; 
 but in the end it may appear, and it would not perhaps be 
 difficult to demonstrate, that they are all gainers by the 
 progress of science. We return, however, to the reflective 
 goniometer. 
 
 A goniometer, as its name implies (ycovta, an angle, 
 /jierpov, a measure), is an instrument for measuring angles. 
 The appellation, though susceptible, of course, of much 
 wider application, is restricted to an apparatus for measuring 
 the angles of crystals. Different goniometers were in use 
 before Wollaston invented his, but they were comparatively 
 rude, and could only be applied to large crystals. This 
 limitation of their employment was doubly disadvantageous. 
 Many substances can be obtained only in minute crystals. 
 In every case, small crystals are ceteris parlbus more perfect 
 than large ones. Wollaston's instrument not only applied 
 to very diminutive crystals, but gave more accurate results 
 the smaller the crystal was, provided only it were visible. 
 It was able to do this from the peculiarity of its principle, 
 which lies in this, that instead of measuring the angle 
 
272 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 formed by the meeting of two faces of a crystal directly, it 
 measures the angle formed by the meeting of rays of light 
 reflected from them. It requires, in consequence, only that 
 the crystal shall be large enough to have visible faces, and 
 that these shall be sufficiently smooth to reflect light. 
 
 When Wollaston published the account of his goniome- 
 ter, he stated as an evidence of its superiority to those pre- 
 viously in use, that whereas a certain angle of Iceland spar 
 was reputed to be of one hundred and four degrees, twenty- 
 eight minutes, forty seconds, it was in reality of one hundred 
 and five degrees. 
 
 It cannot but seem surprising that it should be of interest 
 to a mineralogist or chemist, to know that the angle of a 
 crystal is by half a degree greater or smaller than it has been 
 supposed to be. The importance of the observation arises 
 out of the fact, that a great number of substances which 
 assume the solid form affect perfectly regular shapes, or, as 
 we say, crystallize. The figures which they thus present 
 are not inconstant and uncertain, but, within prescribed and 
 narrow limits, are perfectly fixed and invariable. Common 
 salt, for example, the greater number of the metals, and 
 many other bodies, when they occur as crystals, show 
 themselves as cubes, or solid six-sided figures, with all the 
 faces squares, and all the angles right angles. The well 
 known doubly refracting Iceland spar (carbonate of lime) 
 crystallizes in an equally regular and perfect, but different 
 shape. Its crystals are six-sided, but the faces are rhombs, 
 or resemble the diamond on a pack of cards, and its angles 
 are not right angles. From extended observations on the 
 crystalline shapes of bodies, the important law has been 
 generalized, that c the same chemical compound always 
 assumes, with the utmost precision, the same geometrical 
 form.' This enunciation of the law must be accepted with 
 
The Life of Wollaston. 273 
 
 certain important qualifications and exceptions, which our 
 limits do not permit us to dwell upon. This one point, 
 however, we are anxious to explain : the constancy of form 
 affirmed to exist in crystals does not manifest itself c in equa- 
 lity of the sides or faces of the figures, but in the equality of 
 the angles.' It is the angle, therefore, and not the face of 
 a crystal, which is important ; the latter may vary, the former 
 must not ; hence the value of a goniometer, or angle mea- 
 surer. 
 
 Again, many crystals have the same general shape. A 
 very common form, for example, is an octahedron, or double 
 four-sided pyramid, arranged like two Egyptian pyramids 
 placed base to base. But though the general configuration 
 is similar, the angles at which the faces of the pyramids in- 
 cline towards each other are different in different substances, 
 and distinguish each crystal from all its fellows. Yet the 
 differences in angular inclination, though constant, are often 
 very small ; hence the importance of the reflective gonio- 
 meter, as enabling the observer to detect the slightest dif- 
 ference in angular value between apparently similar crystals. 
 For the trouble of a tedious analysis, and the sacrifice of 
 perhaps a rare substance, we are thus frequently able to 
 substitute the simple device of measuring the angles of its 
 crystals. 
 
 The fact has a general interest also. To the law which 
 the goniometer has discovered we are indebted for the 
 
 o 
 
 exquisite symmetry and perfection of shape which make 
 crystals, like flowers, delightful objects merely to gaze at. 
 They may be crushed to fragments, or dissolved in fluids, 
 or liquefied by heat, or dissipated in vapour, but they grow 
 up again like trees from their roots, or flowers from their 
 seeds, and exhibit their old shapes with a fidelity and ex- 
 actitude of resemblance, which no tree or flower ever 
 
 s 
 
274 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 showed or can show. We heard much of the restoration 
 of the recumbent warriors in the Temple church of Lon- 
 don, and still more of the skill shown in piecing together 
 the broken fragments of the Portland vase ; but all such 
 restorations are poor and faint imitations of the art, with 
 which nature not only restores but reproduces the works of 
 her chisel. 
 
 Were all the crystals in the world reduced to dust, in 
 good time they would each re-appear. The painter and 
 the poet would not only find the tints, and play of colour, 
 and sparkle, exactly as before, but the mathematician would 
 try in vain to discover the smallest fractional difference in 
 the value of their angles. Unity in variety is the voice of 
 all nature ; but in the case of crystals, the unity almost 
 pushes the variety aside. 
 
 To descend from these speculations, the reader will 
 understand, that as every crystallizable substance has an 
 unchangeable form peculiar to itself, the crystalline figure 
 of a body is an important character by which it may be re- 
 cognised and identified. 
 
 But this is the lesser service which the reflective gonio- 
 meter has rendered to science. Early in this century, a 
 great German chemist, Mitscherlich, comparing the results 
 obtained by Wollaston's instrument, with those procured 
 by analysis, in the case of crystalline bodies, discovered a 
 very curious and unexpected law. It appeared, that when 
 substances resemble each other in chemical characters, their 
 crystalline forms are also similar. When the similarity 
 in chemical properties is very great, the shapes become 
 absolutely identical. It is a very singular circumstance, 
 which no one appears to have in the least anticipated, that 
 where two closely-allied bodies, such as arsenic and phos- 
 phorus, unite with the same third substance, they should 
 
The Life of hollas ton. 275 
 
 produce identical forms when the respective compounds 
 are crystallized. Each face of the one slopes at the same 
 angle as the same face of the other. A mould of a crystal 
 of the one would fit a crystal of the same size of the other. 
 A goniometer set at the angle of the one, would exactly 
 measure the angle of the other. Such crystals are named 
 isomorphous, a Greek word synonymous with the Latin 
 one, similiform, also made use of. 
 
 Taught by this law, the chemist, to his astonishment, 
 found himself able to ascertain chemical analogies by 
 measuring angles of crystals, and supplied with a means 
 of controlling and explaining the results of analyses, which 
 otherwise seemed only to lead to contradiction and con- 
 fusion. Crystalline form is now one of the first things 
 attended to in classifying chemical substances, and is the 
 basis of most of our attempts to arrange them into groups 
 and natural families. 
 
 We cannot delay on this curious subject. Suffice it to 
 say that the announcement by Mitscherlich of the law of 
 isomorphism at once overthrew the prevailing systems of 
 mineralogy, and demanded their complete reconstruction. 
 It changed also the aspect of chemistry, and where its in- 
 fluence on that science will end we cannot yet tell. 
 
 It deserves especial notice, but has never obtained it, in 
 histories of the progress of chemistry, that he who, by his 
 gift of the platina crucible, enabled his brethren to extend 
 the whole science, and especially to subject every mineral 
 to analysis, by his other gift of the reflective goniometer 
 showed them how to marshal their discoveries. The latter 
 instrument has been to the chemist like a compass-needle 
 or theodolite to the settlers in a strange country. By means 
 of it, he has surveyed and mapped out the territory he 
 has won, so that new comers may readily understand the 
 
276 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 features of the district ; and has laid down pathways and 
 roads, along which his successors may securely travel. 
 
 A mere list of papers is a dull thing, of no interest to 
 those acquainted with the papers themselves, and of little 
 value to those who are not. The reader, however, must 
 bear with us a little, whilst we bring briefly before him 
 three other essays by Wollaston ; they are all curious, and, 
 besides their intrinsic value, are important as illustrating 
 the versatility of his mind, and the singular accuracy of all 
 his observations. 
 
 One of them is on the interesting and poetical subject 
 of c Fairy Rings.' Most persons in this country must be 
 familiar with the circles of dark green grass, which are 
 frequently seen in natural pastures, or on ground which 
 has long lain unploughed. They are particularly abundant 
 on commons and in sheep-walks, such as the chalk-downs 
 in the south of England. Their dimensions are so great, 
 and they are so symmetrical, and so much darker in colour 
 than the surrounding herbage, that they never fail to attract 
 the attention of even the most careless passer by. These 
 circles, a beautiful rural superstition supposes to have been 
 marked out by the feet of fairies, whirling round in their 
 midnight dances : they have, in consequence, been named 
 fairy rings. It is well known, also, that they gradually in- 
 crease in dimensions : in certain cases, even by as much as 
 two feet in a single year. A believer in elves might sup- 
 pose that the fairies, from time to time, admitted their 
 children to their pastimes, when they were done with the 
 dancing-school and fit for presentation, or in other ways 
 added new guests to their parties, and required more spa- 
 cious waltzing-ground. 
 
 These beautiful and mysterious circles the chemist would 
 not leave to the poet. Keats has complained that 
 
The Life of Wollaston. 277 
 
 4 There was a glorious rainbow once in heaven ; 
 'Tis numbered now amongst the catalogue 
 Of common things.' 
 
 Science, which would not spare the rainbow, has had no 
 mercy on the fairy rings ; though, in truth, both the one 
 and the other still are, and ever will be, as truly the posses- 
 sion of the poet as they were of old. There is no one, we 
 suppose, who does not sympathize with the poetical render- 
 ing of the fairy ring ; and no one, probably, who does not 
 at the same time wish to know what the scientific version 
 is also. Wollaston furnished us with the latter. He was 
 led to form the opinion we are about to state, by noticing 
 ' that some species of fungi were always to be found at the 
 margin of the dark ring of grass, if examined at the proper 
 season.' This led him to make more careful observations, 
 and he came to the conclusion that the formation of the 
 ring was entirely owing to the action of the fungi in the 
 following way. In the centre of each circle, a clump or 
 group of toadstools or mushrooms had once flourished, till 
 the soil, completely exhausted by their continued growth on 
 it, refused to support them any longer. The following 
 year, accordingly, the toadstools which sprang from the 
 spawn of the preceding generation, spread outwards from 
 the original spot of growth towards the unexhausted outer 
 soil. In this way, a barren central place came to be sur- 
 rounded by a ring of fungi, year by year increasing in dia- 
 meter, as it exhausted the earth it grew upon, and travelled 
 outwards in search of virgin soil. But this was not all. 
 The toadstools, as they died, manured or fertilized the 
 ground, so that, although for a certain period the place 
 where they had grown was barren, by and by the grass 
 flourished there more luxuriantly than elsewhere, and 
 manifested this by its greater length and deeper colour. 
 
278 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 In this way, each circle of mushrooms came to be pre- 
 ceded by a ring of withered grass, and succeeded by one of 
 the deepest verdure, and as the one increased the others 
 did also. 
 
 On Salisbury plain, near Stonehenge, where, as in a 
 hallowed and befitting locality, fairy rings abound, we have 
 tested the truth of Wollaston's view. The sides of the 
 low mounds which cover that plain are variegated by the 
 circles in question. A few are imperfect ; quadrants and 
 semicircles ; the greater number wonderfully symmetrical, 
 and to appearance completely circular. The latter exhibit 
 with great uniformity the phenomena which Wollaston de- 
 scribes. A plot of grass, resembling in tint and appearance 
 the ordinary herbage of the down, stands in the centre of a 
 dark green ring five or six feet in diameter. This is fringed 
 by a forest of fungi, and they in their turn are bounded by 
 a circle of stunted, withered grass. This last phenomenon 
 was quite in keeping with Wollaston's theory of the origin 
 of fairy rings. He observes, that c during the growth of 
 fungi they so entirely absorb all nutriment from the soil be- 
 neath, that the herbage is often for a while destroyed, and 
 a ring appears bare of grass surrounding the dark ring ; but 
 after the fungi have ceased to appear, the soil where they 
 had grown becomes darker, and the grass soon vegetates 
 again with peculiar vigour.' These views of Wollaston 
 have been beautifully confirmed by the recent researches of 
 Professor Schlossberger of Tubingen, into the chemical 
 composition of the fungi, by which it appears that they con- 
 tain a larger quantity of nitrogen, of phosphates, and of 
 other salts, than any of our cultivated vegetables. In con- 
 sequence of this, they must exhaust the soil more when they 
 grow on it, and on the other hand, fertilize it more, when 
 restored to it, than any other plants. Dr. Schlossberger 
 
The Life of hollas ton. 279 
 
 has accordingly recommended the employment of the fungi 
 as manures. 1 
 
 We conclude this subject by remarking that our great 
 poet, who had an eye for everything, connects fairy rings 
 and mushrooms together, almost as if he had anticipated 
 Wollaston. Our readers will remember the passage in The 
 Tempest : 
 
 ' You demy-puppets, that 
 
 By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make, 
 Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastime 
 Is to make midnight mushrooms.' 
 
 In another, and one of the most curious of his papers, 
 Wollaston again plays the part of disenchanter of a poetical 
 fancy. 
 
 It is entitled, ' On the apparent direction of the Eyes of 
 a Portrait.' Into this essay we cannot enter at length, but 
 it deserves a word of notice. One large part of it is 
 occupied in showing that we are unconsciously guided in 
 our estimate of the direction in which the eyes of another 
 are turned, not merely by the position of the iris (or coloured 
 circle) and whites of these eyes, but likewise by the direc- 
 tion of the concurrent features, particularly those which are 
 more prominent, as the nose and forehead. However un- 
 expected this statement may be, or perplexing the explana- 
 tion of it, Wollaston puts it out of the power of the least 
 credulous of his readers to deny the fact, by the plates 
 which accompany his paper. In these he shows that the 
 same pair of eyes may be made to look up, or down, or to 
 either side, merely by altering the direction of the nose and 
 
 1 We have seen fields lying fallow in the south of England, because, as was 
 alleged, they would not bear crops, although they were thickly covered with edible 
 mushrooms. Where the latter grow freely, wheat, and the other grains, are cer- 
 tain to flourish also. 
 
280 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 forehead which accompany them. In this paper, also, he 
 supplies an explanation of the familiar fact, that ' if the eyes 
 of a portrait look at the spectator placed in front of the pic- 
 ture, they appear to follow him in every other direction.' 
 
 We need not remind the reader how many allusions are 
 made to this optical phenomenon in the works of our poets 
 and novelists, with whom it has ever been a favourite 
 engine for cheering, terrifying, or instructing their heroes. 
 Here, for example, is one of Sir Walter Scott's many refer- 
 ences to it. When Colonel Everard visited Woodstock 
 lodge, where an ancient family portrait hung upon the walls, 
 c he remembered how, when left alone in the apartment, 
 the searching eye of the old warrior seemed always bent 
 upon his, in whatever part of the room he placed himself, 
 and how his childish imagination was perturbed at a pheno- 
 menon for which he could not account.' 
 
 It did not escape Shakspere. To take a single case. 
 When Bassanio opens the leaden casket, and beholds 
 Portia's portrait, he exclaims, 
 
 * Move these eyes ? 
 
 Or whether, riding on the balls of mine, 
 Seem they in motion ? ' 
 
 A beautiful poem of Mrs. Southey's, c On the removal 
 of some Family Portraits,' turns almost entirely on the 
 subject we are discussing. The explanation is very sim- 
 ple. The only portraits which exhibit the ubiquity of 
 look referred to, are those which have the face and eyes 
 represented as directed straight forwards. A certain de- 
 viation from absolute straightforwardness of look may 
 occur, without the phenomenon disappearing, although in 
 that case it will be less apparent ; but if the face and eyes 
 are much turned to one side, it is not observed. In a 
 front face, the same breadth of forehead, cheek, chin, etc., 
 
The Life of Wollaston. 28 i 
 
 is depicted on either side of the nose, considered as a middle 
 line. The eye, also, is drawn with its iris or coloured ring 
 in the centre, and the white of the eye shown to the same 
 extent on each side of the iris. In a countenance so repre- 
 sented, if the eye appear fixed on the spectator when he 
 stands in front of the portrait, it will continue to gaze on 
 him, from whatever point he regards the picture. If, for 
 example, he place himself far to the one side of the painting, 
 the breadth of the face will appear much diminished. But 
 this horizontal diminution will tell on the whole face equally, 
 and will not alter the relative position of its parts. The 
 nose will still appear with as much breadth of face on the 
 one side as on the other, and therefore stand in the centre. 
 The iris will still exhibit the same breadth of white to the 
 right and to the left, and continue therefore to show itself in 
 the middle of the eye. The countenance, in fact, will still 
 be directed straight forward, and its expression remain un- 
 changed. 
 
 One other reference will conclude our discussion of 
 Wollaston's Essays. The last paper we mention is, c On 
 Sounds inaudible to certain Ears.' Its object is to point 
 out, that while, in the natural healthy state of the ear, there 
 seems to be no limit to the power of discerning low sounds, 
 in many persons who are otherwise quite free from deafness, 
 there exists a total insensibility to high or shrill notes, so 
 that they are quite deaf to these. The hearing of different 
 persons was found by Wollaston to terminate at a note four or 
 five octaves above the middle E of the pianoforte. His own 
 hearing ceased at six octaves above that note. Those who 
 were thus deaf to high notes were, in consequence, quite 
 insensible to the chirping of the grasshopper, the cricket, 
 the sparrow, and the bat. With these observations Wol- 
 laston connects a beautiful speculation as to the possibility 
 
282 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 of insects both emitting and listening to shrill sounds, 
 which we never hear ; whilst they, in like manner, are 
 totally deaf to the graver notes which only affect our ears. 
 We quote his own words : 
 
 ' The range of human hearing includes more than nine 
 octaves, the whole of which are distinct to most ears, though 
 the vibrations of a note at the higher extreme are six hun- 
 dred or seven hundred times more frequent than those 
 which constitute the gravest audible sound. 
 
 ' As vibrations incomparably more frequent may exist, 
 we may imagine that animals like the grylli (grasshoppers, 
 crickets, mole-crickets, etc.), whose powers appear to com- 
 mence nearly where ours terminate, may hear still sharper 
 sounds which we do not know to exist ; and that there may 
 be insects hearing nothing in common with us, but endued 
 with the power of exciting, and a sense that hears the same 
 vibrations which constitute our ordinary sounds, but so re- 
 mote, that the animal which perceives them may be said to 
 possess another sense, agreeing with our own, solely in the 
 medium by which it is excited, and possibly wholly un- 
 affected by those slower vibrations of which we are sensible.' 
 
 This seems to us a striking arid beautiful idea, and sug- 
 gests many thoughts. It is in a fine sense a fulfilment of 
 St. Paul's declaration, ' There are, it may be, so many 
 kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without 
 signification.' 
 
 Such is a most imperfect list of the additions made by a 
 single philosopher to the scientific literature of our country ; 
 and he a private gentleman, working without help from 
 Government, or any other extrinsic aid. Several of the 
 essays we have referred to, were read before the Royal 
 Society of London in the last year of the author's life, 
 
The Life of Wollaston. 2 8 3 
 
 under circumstances which invest them with peculiar inter- 
 est. Towards the latter part of the year 1828, Wollaston 
 became dangerously ill of the disease of the brain of which 
 he died. His complaint was a painful one, and it speedily 
 showed such symptoms as satisfied the sufferer himself that 
 death was at hand. He acted on the information as if the 
 warning of coming dissolution had been accompanied by the 
 same advice which was given to King Hezekiah in similar 
 circumstances, ' Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die 
 and not live.' Finding himself unable to write out an 
 account of such of his discoveries and inventions as he was 
 reluctant should perish with him, he spent his numbered 
 hours in dictating to an amanuensis an account of some of 
 the more important of them. These parting gifts of a dying 
 philosopher to his brethren will be found in the papers bear- 
 ing his name which are printed in the Philosophical Trans- 
 actions for 1829. We have placed their titles at the head 
 of our article. In one of them he makes a touching allusion 
 to the unaccustomed haste which he had been obliged to 
 
 O 
 
 exhibit in drawing it up. No indications of haste, however, 
 appear in the essay in question, or in any of the others re- 
 ferred to. One of them is the account of the process for 
 working platina, and like Wollaston's other papers, is a 
 model of what a physical essay should be. 
 
 These were not his only legacies to science. Shortly 
 before his death, he wrote a letter to the secretary of the 
 Royal Society, informing him that he had that day invested, 
 in the name of the Society, stock to the amount of 1000. 
 The interest of this money he wished to be employed in the 
 encouragement of experiments in natural philosophy. A 
 Wollaston medal is accordingly given periodically by the 
 Royal Society. 
 
 In the June before his death, he was proposed as a mem- 
 
284 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 her of the Astronomical Society of London ; but, according 
 to the rules of that body, he could not have been elected 
 before their last meeting for the year. When the Society 
 met in November 1828, however, the alarming situation of 
 his health, and the great probability of his dissolution pre- 
 vious to the December meeting, induced the Council at once 
 to recommend to the assembled members a departure from 
 the established rule, and that the election should take place 
 at that sitting. This was done, and received the unanimous 
 sanction of the meeting, which insisted on dispensing with 
 even the formality of a ballot. Dr. Wollaston, then within 
 a few days of his death, acknowledged this feeling and cour- 
 teous act by presenting the Society with a valuable telescope, 
 which he greatly prized. It originally belonged to his father, 
 and had been subsequently improved by the application to 
 it of an invention of his own, that of the triple achromatic 
 object-glass, a device on which astronomers set great value. 
 It is impossible to turn from the record of these incidents, 
 without a feeling of strong admiration of the old Roman- 
 like resolution and calm courage with which the suffering 
 philosopher waited for death. We are all too apt to admire 
 only the active agonistic courage of the battle-field, or other 
 arena of energetic and laborious warfare or struggle ; and 
 are prone to let our imaginations kindle over pictures of 
 warriors dying at the moment of victory, covered, as we are 
 pleased to say, with glory. It is well that we should admire 
 these, for so noble a quality as courage must be honoured in 
 all its rightful manifestations. Nevertheless, there are not 
 a few who would prove heroic enough before a visible foe, 
 but would quail before the solitary approach of the ' Last 
 Enemy.' They could endure even to the death, when sur- 
 rounded by hundreds involved in the same peril, and stirred 
 by the same impulse as themselves ; but would lack some- 
 
The Life of Wollaston. 285 
 
 thing of their courage if the influence of numbers, and the 
 sympathy of fellow-sufferers were gone, and the excitement 
 of active and manifest struggle were wanting. There are 
 not many who, laid on a sick-bed as Wollaston was, and 
 certain that recovery was hopeless, would have so risen 
 above the terror of death, and the distraction of pain, as to 
 work as if health were in possession, and long life in pro- 
 spect. The great majority would think they did well if they 
 submitted to their fate with some show of decent gravity, 
 and made no unmanly complaint ; whilst every solace that 
 could be furnished was applied to smooth the way to the 
 tomb. We cannot, therefore, but highly honour the reso- 
 lute man of science, who did not permit sickness, or suffer- 
 ing, or coming death, to prevent him from putting on record 
 the otherwise lost knowledge, which he thought might serve 
 the cause of truth and benefit his fellow-men. 
 
 It would have been in the highest degree interesting to 
 have known what were the grounds of this notable courage, 
 and 'with what feelings Wollaston not only prepared to 
 leave this world, but looked forward to a world to come. 
 We long to learn whether it be but constitutional calmness 
 and stoicism such as a Greek or Roman might have shown, 
 or fortitude such as only a Christian can display, that we 
 are called on to admire in the dying philosopher. But 
 none of those who alone were entitled to speak on this 
 point have given us information concerning it ; and we 
 forbear to form any conjectures. Whencesoever derived, 
 Wollaston's stedfast resolution continued to the end. When 
 he was nearly in the last agonies, one of his friends having 
 observed, loud enough for him to hear, that he was not at 
 the time conscious of what was passing around him, he 
 immediately made a sign for a pencil and paper, which was 
 given him. He then wrote down some figures, and, after 
 
286 R eligio- Ch emici . 
 
 casting up the sum, returned them. The amount was 
 right. He died on the twenty-second of December 1828, 
 aged sixty-two, a few months before his great scientific 
 contemporaries, Sir Humphry Davy and Dr. Thomas 
 Young. After death, it appeared that that portion of the 
 brain from which the optic nerve arises was occupied by a 
 large tumour. If we are right in thinking that the singular 
 one-sided blindness from which he sometimes suffered was 
 an early symptom of this malady, it must have proceeded 
 very slowly, for his paper on the semi-decussatiori of the 
 optic nerves was published in 1824. It is interesting, for 
 the sake of psychology, to know, that in spite of the exten- 
 sive cerebral disease referred to, Wollaston's faculties were 
 unclouded to the last. 
 
 There remains but little to be told. No picturesque 
 incidents or romantic stories adorn Wollaston's biography, 
 and but few characteristic anecdotes have been preserved. 
 His days were spent with entire devotion to science, be- 
 tween his laboratory and his library. For it was little better 
 than an extension of this, that he was a diligent attendant 
 on the meetings of the Royal, the Geological, and other 
 Societies, and took a keen interest in their proceedings. 
 Occasional excursions to the country appear to have been 
 his only recreation. These afforded him an opportunity of 
 prosecuting geology, which was a favourite study, and, 
 during the last twelve years of his life, enabled him to 
 gratify the love for angling with which Sir H. Davy had 
 infected him. 
 
 His reluctance, or rather positive refusal, to admit even 
 friends to his laboratory, has already been referred to. Plato 
 is said to have written above the door of his study, ' Let 
 no one who is not a mathematician enter/ Had Wollaston 
 placed an inscription, or rather a proscription, above the 
 
The Life of Wollaston. 287 
 
 door of his laboratory, it would have been still more brief 
 and comprehensive. ' Let NO one enter.' It is related 
 that a gentleman of his acquaintance, having been left by 
 the servant to ramble from one room to another till he 
 should be ready to see him, penetrated into the laboratory. 
 The doctor, on coming in, discovered the intrusion ; but 
 not suffering himself to express all he felt on the occasion, 
 took his friend by the arm, and having led him to the most 
 sacred spot in the room, said c Mr. P., do you see that 
 furnace?' c I do.' 'Then make a profound bow to it, 
 for as this is the first time, it will also be the last time, of 
 your seeing it.' 
 
 This hermetically-sealed laboratory is known to have 
 been of small dimensions. It did not require to be large, 
 for Wollaston's researches were systematically prosecuted 
 on a scale of nearly microscopic minuteness. He was 
 celebrated for the almost atomic quantities of matter on 
 which he wrought to as much good purpose as other men 
 on hundreds of grains. His demonstration of the identity 
 of columbium and tantalum was founded upon the examina- 
 tion of a very few grains of two rare minerals. His detec- 
 tion of titanium in the iron slags was effected on equally 
 small quantities. 
 
 Dr. Paris mentions, in his life of Davy, that a foreign 
 philosopher once called upon Dr. Wollaston with letters 
 of introduction, and expressed an anxious desire to see his 
 laboratory. c Certainly,' he replied, and immediately pro- 
 duced a small tray containing some glass tubes, a blow- 
 pipe, two or three watch-glasses, a slip of platina, and a 
 few test-tubes. It is added by the same gentleman, that 
 Wollaston appeared to take great delight in showing by 
 what small means he could produce great results. Shortly 
 after he had inspected the grand galvanic battery constructed 
 
288 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 by Mr. Children, and had witnessed some of those brilliant 
 phenomena of combustion which its powers produced, he 
 accidentally met a brother chemist in the street. Seizing 
 his button (his constant habit when speaking on any subject 
 of interest), he led him into a secluded corner, when, taking 
 from his waistcoat-pocket a tailor's thimble, which con- 
 tained a galvanic arrangement, and pouring into it the 
 contents of a small vial, he instantly heated a platina wire 
 to a white heat. 
 
 Wollaston was fond of amassing money : there have not, 
 indeed, been wanting accusations to the effect, that if he 
 had sought less after wealth, he would have done more for 
 science. How far these charges are true, we have no 
 means of judging, as it does not appear from the published 
 accounts, in what exact way he made his money. That 
 it was chiefly by the platina process is certain, but whether 
 he engaged in the manufacture himself, or only superin- 
 tended it, we do not know. On this point we would only 
 remark, that there is something, to say the least of it, very 
 partial and unfair in the way in which obloquy is cast upon 
 men of science, if they appropriate to themselves some of 
 the wealth which their discoveries procure for others. If 
 a successful naval or military hero is lavishly pensioned out 
 of the public purse, no one complains. It is not thought 
 strange that a great painter or sculptor, whilst he justly 
 declares his productions are worth untold gold, should 
 nevertheless demand a modicum of coin from his admirers. 
 Neither is 'the poet or musician blamed who sells his works 
 to the highest bidder. But if a chemist, for whom there 
 are few pensions and no peerages, think to help out a scanty 
 or insufficient income by manufacturing gunpowder like 
 Davy, or magnesia like Henry, or malleable platina like 
 Wollaston, or guano like Liebig, the detractors assail him 
 
The Life of Wollaston. 289 
 
 at once. He has lowered the dignity of his science, and, 
 it would seem, should starve, rather than degrade his voca- 
 tion. That vocation, so far, at least, as the practical fruits 
 of his own labours are concerned, is to be a kind of jackal, 
 to start game which others are to follow, a beagle, to hunt 
 down prey which others may devour. Surely there is 
 but scanty justice here, and some forgetfulness of a sacred 
 text, ' Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that 
 treadeth out the corn.' 
 
 We are no advocates of a sordid spirit in men of science, 
 neither do we lament that Government is less liberal to them 
 in this than in other countries. When we look at the roll 
 of our illustrious men, we see little reason to regret that 
 they have not the grants which France, Germany, and 
 Russia so freely bestow. Neither system is perfect, and 
 our own, with all its faults, works well. But private enter- 
 prise must manifestly supplement the deficiencies of Govern- 
 ment aid. It is therefore unfair to blame an unpensioned, 
 unplaced chemist like Wollaston, if he secure an income by 
 his independent labour. To manufacture platina may be, 
 in the eyes of the world, a less dignified occupation than 
 practising medicine, but it left the man of science much 
 more leisure for his studies than physic would have done, 
 and paid him a great deal better. 
 
 We will not, however, take it on us to affirm that 
 Wollaston might not have been content with less than 
 ^30,000. Perhaps, and probably he might have been, 
 though we know too little of his circumstances to be able 
 to judge exactly on that point. That he did not selfishly 
 hoard his money may be gathered from the following 
 anecdote, which is declared to be authentic. Having been 
 applied to by a gentleman, who was involved by unexpected 
 difficulties, to procure him some Government situation, Dr. 
 
 T 
 
290 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 Wollaston's reply was, c I have lived to sixty without 
 asking a single favour from men in office, and it is not after 
 that age that I shall be induced to do so, even were it to 
 serve a brother. If the enclosed can be of use to you in 
 your present difficulties, pray accept it, for it is much at 
 your service.' The enclosed was a cheque for ten thousand 
 pounds. 
 
 In attempting further to illustrate Wollaston's character, 
 we must have recourse to the device so common with bio- 
 graphers, of comparing him with some of those who were 
 engaged in the same pursuits as himself. A natural and 
 admirable occasion for doing so, such as Plutarch would 
 have delighted in, is afforded by the fact that Wollaston and 
 Davy were contemporaries and friends. It is difficult to 
 imagine a greater contrast than that between the eager, 
 imaginative poet-chemist, on the one hand, and the austere, 
 unimpassioned, monk-philosopher on the other. Davy was 
 a man of sanguine, enthusiastic temperament, overflowing 
 with life and animation ; Wollaston's nature was as still and 
 unmoved as the bosom of a lake hidden from the wind in 
 the recesses of a cavern. The former was a spoiled child 
 of nature and of fortune, and greedy of applause. He de- 
 lighted in the approving smiles of ladies, and was flattered 
 by the notice of the great. It was a source of pain to him 
 that he was not of good family. Wollaston was a dis- 
 appointed man. He begged one boon from his brethren, the 
 physicianship of an hospital ; when that was refused him, he 
 shut himself up in his laboratory, and rejoiced, when sixty 
 years old, that he would not ask a favour, even for a brother. 
 He was indifFerent to the notice of all but scientific per- 
 sons, and avoided every occasion of attracting popular at- 
 tention. 
 
 Their characters as philosophers were as different as their 
 
The Life of Wollaston. 291 
 
 tastes and habits as men. Davy had far greater originating 
 power, boldness of speculation, and faculty of generaliza- 
 tion ; and he showed great skill in realizing his ideas. 
 Wollaston excelled Davy in extent of scientific accomplish- 
 ment, in minute accuracy of observation, and in closeness 
 of reasoning. He wrought out his conceptions with sin- 
 gular ingenuity, and brought the utmost mechanical experi- 
 ence and dexterity to the solution of difficult questions. 
 Both were good artists and manipulators, but Wollaston 
 was much the better of the two. Davy was very ingenious 
 in devising, but reckless and inexperienced in constructing. 
 Wollaston excelled him in ingenuity, and, moreover, was a 
 first-rate workman. 
 
 The mode in which they reached their discoveries was as 
 dissimilar as the subjects which they selected. Davy con- 
 sidered the faintest analogy worth pursuing. Possibilities 
 were with him probabilities ; probabilities, truths. Wollas- 
 ton's idea of a truth was not so much something proved 
 true, but something which could not be proved not to be 
 true. His most positive yes was often a not no, rather 
 than a hearty yea and amen. When Davy took up an 
 inquiry, it was with the highest hopes and visions of suc- 
 cess. If he gained his end, he was greatly elated ; if he 
 failed, he was correspondingly depressed. Wollaston set 
 about a scientific undertaking more as if it were a matter of 
 duty than an occupation which by its result could possibly 
 give him pain or pleasure. His pulse probably never 
 quickened or slackened a beat in consequence of success or 
 failure. When Davy discovered potassium, his delight and 
 agitation were so great, that he enrolled the fact in his note- 
 book in an almost illegible scrawl. Wollaston would have 
 written the announcement in his roundest hand. With Davy, 
 the end of the inquiry was the great object ; the shortest way 
 
292 R eligio- Che mid . 
 
 by which it could be reached was the best. The means by 
 which it was arrived at, were in themselves indifferent. 
 He hastened impetuously to reach the goal. For Wollas- 
 ton, the journey had interest, whatever might be its conclu- 
 sion. He hated to make a false or doubtful move, though 
 it might advance him towards his ultimate object. Each 
 stage of the undertaking was, for the time, the entire subject 
 of concern. He travelled leisurely along, breaking new 
 ground with the utmost caution, fastidious about every step 
 of the journey. A sufficient pathway would not content 
 him, though no one might follow his steps. He must stop, 
 and make it a perfect road. The one philosopher was like 
 the stag-hound running down the game his keen eye got 
 sight of, by speed of foot and nimbleness of limb, or missing 
 it altogether. The other resembled the blood-hound follow- 
 ing leisurely on the trail of his prey ; slow, comparatively, 
 in his movements, and with eyes fixed upon the ground, 
 but certain never to quit the chase, or to make one false 
 step till he was up with his victim. Davy's genius was 
 like the burning thunderbolt whose forces he did so much 
 to explain. Attracted only by towering and lofty things, it 
 smote down from the zenith, prostrating maiden citadels, 
 and scattering in dust, or dissipating in fiery drops, whatso- 
 ever opposed it. Wollaston's genius was like the light, 
 whose laws he so much loved to study. It was not, how- 
 ever, the blazing light of day that it resembled, but the still 
 moonlight, as ready with clear but cold radiance to shine 
 in on a solitary obscure chamber, as able to illuminate with 
 its unburning beams, every dark and stately hall of the 
 closed fortresses where Nature keeps her secrets. 
 
 In their habits of laboratory working and manipulation, 
 Davy and Wollastori have been compared to the painters 
 Michael Angelo and Teniers ; the former, reckless, im- 
 
The Life of Wollaston. 293 
 
 petuous, and turbulent in his mode of producing results ; 
 the latter, minute, microscopic, precise, and accurate, even 
 in the smallest details. The comparison is just, so far, but 
 it either elevates Davy too high, or degrades Wollaston too 
 low. Davy devising his safety-lamp, after a few rapidly 
 performed experiments, may be the Michael Angelo, con- 
 trasted with Wollaston, the Teniers, slowly perfecting a 
 process for drawing out a capillary gold wire. But Wol- 
 laston, solving by means of a little telescope of his own 
 adaptation, the problem of the existence of an atmosphere 
 round the sun, contrasted with Davy discovering potassium 
 by means of a gigantic voltaic battery, and every other aid 
 and appliance to boot, must be called (as an artist friend 
 suggests) at least a Correggio, whilst the latter is styled 
 rather a Titian than a Michael Angelo. Davy and Wol- 
 laston were men of most marked individuality of character, 
 and giants both. The youthful student will do well who 
 accepts the guidance of either. He will do better, if, like 
 Faraday, he unite the excellencies of both. 
 
 To these attempts to bring out Wollaston's character 
 by contrast with that of his great contemporary, we would 
 add a word or two concerning his likeness in disposition to 
 another of our distinguished men of science. Those who 
 are acquainted with the life of the Honourable Henry 
 Cavendish, will acknowledge that he and Wollaston resem- 
 bled each other greatly. In both there was the same aus- 
 terity, taciturnity, and reserve ; the same extreme caution in 
 drawing conclusions, and exact precision in stating them ; 
 the same catholicity of tastes as regarded their philosophical 
 pursuits ; the same relish for scientific society, and dislike 
 to any other ; the same indifference to applause ; the same 
 frugal habits ; the same candour and justice towards other 
 men of science ; and the same strong love of truth and per- 
 
294 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 feet integrity. And as in life they were alike, so in death 
 they were not divided. The closing moments of the one 
 were marked by the same kind of calm courage and serenity 
 which distinguished the death-bed of the other. Cavendish 
 and Wollaston might in truth have been twin-brothers. 
 
 In contrasting Wollaston with Davy, and in comparing 
 him with Cavendish, we have not willingly overstated 
 matters. But all such attempts partake more or less of 
 rhetorical artifice, and convey at best but a partial and im- 
 perfect idea of the character of any individual. No man is 
 exactly the opposite or exactly the image of another. If 
 his name be worth preserving at all, his individuality must 
 be marked, and should be susceptible of definition and de- 
 monstration. It seems to us that three predominant qua- 
 lities determined the scope of Wollaston's genius. The 
 statement of these will perhaps in some degree explain the 
 comparatively slight impression which he has made on 
 science, and the partial oblivion into which his name has 
 already fallen. 
 
 We remark first, that, in common with all great obser- 
 vers in physics, he possessed a keen intellect, a well 
 balanced judgment, a most retentive memory, rapidity and 
 readiness in discerning analogies, great power of analysis 
 and also of generalization, perseverance in working out ideas 
 once started, and practical skill in effecting their realization. 
 
 To hold in check these estimable qualities, there existed 
 in the first place a quite inordinate caution, which never 
 permitted them to range freely over the domains of science. 
 Wollaston's caution was of a peculiar kind. It was not the 
 wariness of timidity or self-distrust. He was in all respects 
 a courageous man, and had much more self-reliance than 
 Davy. The boldness of a speculation would not have de- 
 terred him from entertaining it. It would, in truth, have 
 
The Life of Wollaston. 295 
 
 been neither a recommendation nor an objection to any sug- 
 gestion. Fearlessness or timidity, as evinced in a hypothesis 
 or theory, were qualities intangible to science, which was 
 only concerned with the question, was the speculation true, 
 or was it not ? 
 
 It was untruth that Wollaston so greatly dreaded ; and 
 the fear of it made him prone to under-estimate the positive 
 worth of any fact. An inquiry thus became for him a very 
 tedious and protracted affair. It was not sufficient that a 
 fact, perhaps quite incidental to the main object, and what 
 other men would have called trivial, was true enough for 
 the use he had to make of it. It must be true enough for 
 every purpose it could be applied to : in a word, positively 
 and absolutely true. Wollaston was thus like a man cross- 
 ing a river by casting in stepping-stones, but who would 
 not be content, that, with here and there a pretty long leap, 
 and now and then a plash and a wetting, he should get 
 across. He must stop and square and set each stone, before 
 he stepped on to the next, and so measure his way to the 
 other side. Yet the stones were no more to him than to 
 other travellers. To cross the river was his object as 
 well as theirs. The stepping-stones were only the means 
 to that. But they were doubtful and uncertain means, if 
 carelessly arranged. Many would reach the opposite side 
 in safety, but a single pilgrim might be washed away and 
 drowned. Wollaston made a pathway safe even for the 
 blind. 
 
 Davy, when he discovered potassium, argued somewhat 
 thus : It is probable for several, or (as he would say) for 
 many reasons, that potash and soda are the oxides of metals. 
 It is also probable that electricity, which can decompose so 
 many things, will be able to decompose them. He tried if 
 it would, and discovered some dozen new metals. Wollas- 
 
2 96 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 ton would have said, It is possible that the alkalies contain 
 metals, and possible also that electricity could separate them. 
 But at that point he would have stopped to array the pro- 
 babilities against both ideas proving true ; and these would 
 have appeared so strong that he would never have gone 
 further. 
 
 All discoverers, with the exception of the very highest, 
 such as Newton, take a great deal for granted. They ad- 
 vance not by steps, but by strides, and often gain their ends 
 in strange ways. The new country in which they land 
 themselves and their brethren, is reached by some bold at- 
 tempt which is soon stigmatized as illegitimate and unworthy. 
 The new country, however, is there for all that, and more 
 legitimate and worthy methods of approach are soon dis- 
 covered. We have Liebig for example, in our own day, 
 accused of assuming doctrines that he cannot prove ; and 
 of giving us hypotheses as thoroughly established generali- 
 zations. Now and then he is provoked to return some 
 indignant rejoinder to the bitter denunciations of his angry 
 critics. But they make no abiding impression on the eager 
 German, who replies with fresh assumptions and new hypo- 
 theses, more aggravating than before. His successors will 
 doubtless weed out of his system as useless many things 
 which he counts as essential to it, and establish as only 
 partially just, much that he believes to be absolutely true. 
 But if Liebig had stopped like Wollaston to render each 
 step in his progress incontrovertible, organic chemistry 
 would be infinitely less advanced than it is at the present 
 day. 
 
 Had Wollaston been a man of as grand and as fine intel- 
 lect as Newton, his caution would not have prevented him 
 being a great discoverer ; but with faculties much more 
 limited than his, he had caution equally great. Accord- 
 
The Life of Wollaston. 297 
 
 ingly, although he had the start of Davy in electricity, and 
 knew that science thoroughly, he allowed the latter to carry 
 off the greater number of the trophies in galvanic discovery. 
 He detected for himself the law of combination in multiple 
 proportion, and might have extended it into such a scheme 
 as Dalton embodied in his atomic hypothesis. Wollaston 
 was infinitely better qualified than Dalton to investigate by 
 experiment, laws of combination. But he stopped with the 
 discovery of the one law, and did not even publish that, till 
 Dalton had made it known along with several others. 
 
 But characteristic as caution was of Wollaston, it may 
 be questioned whether it was more strongly marked in him 
 than in many other philosophers. Black, and still more 
 Cavendish, were as cautious as he was. We must look 
 farther, before we can sufficiently account for the appar- 
 ently small amount of fruit which his life of scientific 
 labour yielded. 
 
 We would indicate as the second feature in Wollaston's 
 mind which prevented his effecting greater achievements, 
 the versatility of his tastes. There was scarcely a science 
 which he had not studied and was not competent to extend. 
 His Cambridge education gave him a taste for mathematics, 
 and the mathematico-physical sciences. From his father he 
 inherited a fondness for astronomy, and by him he was pro- 
 bably initiated into its mysteries from his earliest years. 
 No man can be long an astronomer without feeling it neces- 
 sary to study geology : Wollaston accordingly became a 
 geologist. Neither will any one make much use of tele- 
 scopes without becoming anxious to understand and to 
 improve their construction : all astronomers, accordingly, 
 are students of optics. Wollaston was a most diligent one. 
 None of these sciences, however, will support their vota- 
 ries : our philosopher accordingly studied medicine. This 
 
298 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 introduced him to anatomy, physiology, pathology, botany, 
 and chemistry, on each of which he published papers. 
 
 Davy had a most imperfect acquaintance with all the 
 sciences, except chemistry and electricity. Wollaston knew 
 them all, and worked at them by turns. A list of some of 
 his papers which we have not commented upon will show 
 how impartially he distributed his attention. The Bakerian 
 lecture for 1803 : ' Observations of the quantity of hori- 
 zontal refraction ; with a method of measuring the dip at 
 sea.' The Bakerian lecture for 1806: 'On the force 
 of percussion.' The Croonian lecture for 1810 : ' On 
 muscular motion, sea-sickness, and carriage exercise.' The 
 Bakerian lecture for 1813 : ' On the elementary particles of 
 certain crystals.' c On a method of freezing at a distance.' 
 ' On a method of drawing extremely fine wires.' ' On a 
 periscopic camera obscura and microscope.' c On a method 
 of cutting rock crystal for micrometers.' c On gouty 
 concretions.' c On the concentric adjustment of a triple 
 object-glass,' etc. etc. The reader will add to these, 
 those named or discussed in our article already. 
 
 Davy was obliged to confine himself to the two sciences 
 he knew, and in consequence, greatly extended them. 
 Wollaston had the c open sesame* to them all, and the re- 
 sult was, that he did a little for every one. He who divides 
 his fortune into a number of small bequests, and leaves one 
 to each of those who have a claim on him, is thanked for 
 the time, but speedily forgotten. But when a man gives his 
 all to a single great object, it embalms his memory. Wol- 
 laston has passed from men's notice. Davy is immortal. 
 
 There remains, however, a third characteristic to be 
 noticed before we can understand all that biassed Wollaston, 
 and turned his thoughts away from great scientific actions. 
 We allude to his wonderful inventiveness and mechanical 
 
The Life of Wollaston. 299 
 
 ingenuity. We call it wonderful, because, with the excep- 
 tion of James Watt, Hooke, and a very few others, Wol- 
 laston surpassed all his scientific countrymen in this respect, 
 and there are not many foreign natural philosophers who 
 could be placed above him. Without entering into any 
 detailed proof of this, we only remind the reader that he 
 was the inventor of the reflecting goniometer, the camera 
 lucida, the dip sector, the cryophorus ; of a micrometer, of 
 various improvements on the microscope, on the common 
 eye-glass, on the camera obscura, and of one most impor- 
 tant one on the telescope ; of the method of rendering 
 platina malleable, of a method of drawing extremely fine 
 wires, of a method of comparing the light of the sun with 
 that of the fixed stars, and of many others which we cannot 
 stop to mention. In addition to these special inventions, 
 his papers are filled with descriptions of the most ingenious 
 and original contrivances for securing the ends he had in 
 view. When he became an angler, he astonished his 
 friends by many curious devices for overcoming difficulties 
 in the new art he had taken up. 
 
 It must have come within the observation of most per- 
 sons, that very ingenious mechanical contrivers find the 
 greatest pleasure in giving birth to inventions, and, where 
 no other and higher taste divides their inclinations, and no 
 pressing duty occupies their time, often devote themselves 
 entirely to the gratification of their talent. It is most natu- 
 ral that they should do so. There are few intellectual 
 pleasures greater than that of being creators, even to the 
 extent that man may be one. The feeling of exultation 
 with which the poet, the painter, or the musician, rejoices 
 over the offspring of his genius, is shared, though in a lower 
 degree, by the inventor, whose new instrument or method 
 is as much a creation, the embodiment and monument of 
 
300 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 an idea or ideas, as the poem, or the picture, or the ora- 
 torio. In many men, ingenuity goes no further than devis- 
 ing. They are not craftsmen, to execute their plans ; and 
 to give them to workmen would involve too costly a grati- 
 fication of their wishes. But Wollaston was an excellent 
 workman ; his hand was as ready to construct as his brain 
 to invent ; and they went together. There was thus a two- 
 fold temptation to gratify his inventive powers ; and he did 
 gratify them to the utmost : but time so spent was often 
 little better than thrown away. We rejoice that he in- 
 vented a reflecting goniometer, and supplied an achromatic 
 object-glass for the telescope, and we do not grudge the 
 camera lucida ; but as for the not very important improve- 
 ment of spectacles, microscopes, and camerae obscurae, 
 they might safely have been left to be made by a duller 
 man, when it appeared they were wanted. It was putting 
 Pegasus in the yoke, or setting Samson to grind at the mill^ 
 to waste Wollaston's energies on such work. His case 
 should be a warning to young scientific men who have a 
 great mechanical turn, to take care that it does not warp 
 them aside from higher objects, and convert them into mere 
 instrument-makers. When we think how many inventions 
 are only works of supererogation, no better than Rob Roy's 
 self-acting pistol, which was to protect the entrance into a 
 leather purse ; or useless toys, like the recent Eureka 
 machine, for making nonsense Latin hexameters, or of the 
 most circumscribed application, like patent needle-threaders ; 
 we cannot but wish that each inventor would pause, and 
 ask whether there is, or will be any need or demand for 
 what he is about to devise, before he proceeds to execute 
 his project. Many of Wollaston's inventions are now for- 
 gotten or superseded. 
 
 The restraint and distraction of faculty which these three 
 
The Life of Wollaston. 301 
 
 influences occasioned, were fatal to Wollaston's being a 
 distinguished or systematic discoverer. His inordinate in- 
 tellectual caution kept him from giving to the world any 
 great generalization. Had he attempted one, he would 
 have spent a lifetime in establishing it to his own satisfac- 
 tion. His acquaintance with most of the physical sciences 
 induced him, instead of dedicating his life to the estab- 
 lishment of some one great theory in a single branch of 
 knowledge, to pursue many inquiries in each ; these were 
 sufficiently limited in scope to be brought to a conclusion, 
 satisfactory even to his fastidious, sceptical spirit, in a 
 reasonable time. His mechanical ingenuity constantly 
 tempted him to improve some one of the thousand instru- 
 ments of physical science which are not perfect. 
 
 He must nevertheless be counted great, on the ground of 
 the multitude of single works which he executed so ably. 
 He will stand in the second rank of great physical philo- 
 sophers, along with Black and Cavendish, Davy and 
 Dal ton. 
 
 The portraits of Wollaston represent him as a grave, 
 silent, meditative man : one who would excite much sin- 
 cere respect, but little enthusiastic affection, among those 
 who knew him. He led a solitary life, and was never 
 married. 
 
 His senses were peculiarly acute a valuable possession 
 to a physical philosopher. Some, indeed, have dwelt upon 
 the acuteness of Wollaston's senses as the source of his 
 greatness as an inventor and discoverer. Others have in- 
 dignantly affirmed that it was wronging a great philosopher 
 to ascribe his triumphs over nature, merely to his having 
 had a sharp eye and nimble fingers. The dispute seems 
 a needless and a foolish one. That Wollaston had very 
 acute bodily senses, has been certified to us by himself, 
 
302 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 and by those who were his associates. But if any one 
 think that the mere possession of these will make a man a 
 Wollaston, let him only consider that there is not a Red 
 Indian or an Esquimaux who can distinguish a white hare 
 from the white snow around it, who does not at least equal, 
 if not far surpass, the philosopher in acuteness of bodily 
 senses. 
 
 On the other hand, it would be in the highest degree 
 unwise to despise the gifts of sensitive bodily organs, and 
 to leave out of consideration the influence of the physical 
 element in determining the character of men. Soul and 
 body must be present in certain though varying proportions, 
 to suit us for our special vocations ; and the elements must 
 be as kindly, though differently mixed, to give the world 
 assurance of a physical philosopher as of a poet or a states- 
 man. Wollaston, like most of his distinguished fellow- 
 men, owed a great deal to his body, but a great deal more 
 to his soul. 
 
 From what has been already stated, it will be manifest 
 that our philosopher was not what most people would term 
 an amiable person. He was, however, a just and most 
 honourable man ; candid, open, and free from envy. Of 
 this, many proofs might be given. We have already seen 
 that he freely lent his influence to secure Sir H. Davy the 
 chair of the Royal Society. His papers, also, afford in- 
 cidentally many evidences of his candour. In the one on 
 the finite extent of the atmosphere, he mentions, that after 
 making his own observations on the transit of Venus over 
 the sun's disk, he discovered that results equally accurate 
 had already been obtained by M. Vidal of Montpellier, to 
 whom, accordingly, he assigns the priority. In his essay on 
 the forms of the elementary particles of certain crystals, he 
 points out that he had been anticipated by Dr. Hooke. He* 
 
The Life of hollas ton. 303 
 
 states, as a reason for publishing his paper on super and 
 sub-acid salts, that he wished to furnish Dr. Dalton with a 
 better means of proving the truth of his doctrine of com- 
 bination in multiple proportions than the latter's analysis of 
 certain gases had supplied. He had occasion to point out 
 that the chemist Chenevix had committed a great blunder 
 in reference to the properties of the metal palladium : he 
 did it in the most delicate and courteous way. 
 
 Altogether, the combination of reserve with perfect 
 straightforwardness ; the relish for acquiring money, with 
 the generosity in parting with it when it could be worthily 
 bestowed ; the clear intellect, the self-reliance, the aversion 
 to interference or intrusion on the part of strangers ; the 
 impartial justice to rivals, and the business-like method 
 of all his habits, seem to us pre-eminently to mark out 
 Wollaston as, par excellence^ The English Philosopher. 
 
LIFE AND DISCOVERIES OF DALTON. 1 
 
 THE decease of Dalton, the greatest of English chemists, 
 and one of the most distinguished cultivators of general 
 physics, has naturally awakened a desire, on the part of 
 many, to know something concerning his scientific disco- 
 veries and personal history. No satisfactory account has 
 been hitherto published either of the former or the latter. 
 We trust that the following sketch will go some way 
 towards supplying this deficiency. 2 
 
 John Dalton was born at Eaglesfield, near Cockermouth, 
 in Cumberland, on the 5th of September 1766. His father, 
 Joseph Dalton, was originally a person of no property, but 
 after the death of an elder brother, he became possessed of 
 a small copyhold estate, which he farmed with the assist- 
 ance of his sons. He had six children, of whom only three 
 survived to maturity Jonathan, John, the subject of this 
 
 1 (i.) Meteorological Observations and Essays. By John Dalton, D.C.L., F.R.S. 
 First Edition, 1793. Second Edition, 1834. 
 
 (2.) A Neiv System of Chemical Philosophy. By John Dalton. Part I. 1808. 
 Part II, 1 8 10. Vol. II. 1827. 
 
 (3.) Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester from 1793 to 
 1836. 
 
 2 Since this was written, a Memoir of Dalton has appeared, under the auspices 
 of the Cavendish Society, from the pen of Dr. Henry. In the preface, he speaks 
 of this notice as ' an elaborate and well-conceived article by Dr. G. Wilson, the 
 accomplished biographer of Cavendish, beyond comparison the ablest and justest 
 appreciation that has yet appeared of Dalton's philosophical character and dis- 
 coveries.' EDITOR. 
 
Life and Discoveries of Dalton. 305 
 
 article, and Mary. The first-named of these obtained the 
 estate on the decease of his father, and retained it till his 
 own death, in or near the year 1835, when it became the 
 property of John Dalton. 
 
 Joseph, the father, though straitened in circumstances, 
 strove to give his family the best education within his 
 means, and John attended a school conducted by a member 
 of the Society of Friends, named John Fletcher, until he 
 had attained his twelfth year. We have no means of know- 
 ing anything concerning the nature or amount of the in- 
 structions which he received at this school (the only one he 
 ever attended) ; but he is said to have made c very consider- 
 able progress in knowledge,' and he always spoke with 
 respect of his early preceptor. That he did make such 
 progress, and that he gave early proof of rare energy and 
 natural capability, we may gather from the fact, that at the 
 age of twelve or thirteen, he commenced a school in his 
 native village, and persevered in teaching during two 
 winters. 
 
 So modest, unassuming, and conscientious a man, as 
 Dalton proved himself in after-life to be, must have been 
 conscious, even at that early age, of the possession, both of 
 knowledge, and of the power to impart it, or he would not 
 have committed himself to so difficult a task. How he 
 prospered in it we are not told, but probably not greatly, for 
 we learn that his vacant time was occupied in assisting his 
 father upon his farm ; and he is said to have taken part 
 in the labour of altering the farm-house. He manifested a 
 strong tendency towards mathematical pursuits when very 
 young, and had some assistance in the prosecution of his 
 taste in that respect from a gentleman named Robinson, 
 who, along with his wife, an accomplished woman, directed 
 the studies of the young philosopher. 
 
3 c 6 R eligio- Ch emici. 
 
 In 1 78 1, at the age of fifteen, Dalton removed to Kendal, 
 where his cousin, named George Bewley, then resided, as 
 the teacher of a boarding-school, with whom the brother 
 of Dalton had lived as an assistant. Dalton succeeded 
 his brother in this office, and resided in Kendal till 1792, 
 actively engaged in learning and teaching mathematics and 
 the physical sciences. During his residence in that town, 
 he attracted the attention of Mr. Gough, a blind gentleman, 
 who, in spite of his misfortune, was devoted to the study of 
 physics and natural history. Mr. Gough had an excellent 
 library and some apparatus, which he placed freely at the 
 disposal of Dalton, who soon became his assistant and com- 
 panion. The service required was of a light and pleasant 
 description, and the blind philosopher, who was possessed of 
 excellent natural abilities, and had obtained a liberal educa- 
 tion, appears to have acted the kindest part towards Dalton, 
 who, in return, was never weary of expressing his sense of 
 obligation to his benefactor. When Dalton published his 
 Meteorological Essays, in 1793, he said, in reference to Mr. 
 Gough ' If there be anything new, and of importance to 
 science, embraced in this wo.k, it is owing, in great part, 
 to my having had the advantage of his instructions and 
 example in philosophical examination.' And although we 
 may believe that Dalton's modesty led him somewhat to 
 over-estimate his obligation to Mr. Gough, there can be no 
 doubt that a person whose early education had been com- 
 paratively so neglected, must have derived the greatest 
 benefit from intercourse with such a person as the lattter is 
 described to have been. After his death, and so late as 
 1834, Dalton spoke of him as a prodigy in scientific attain- 
 ments, considering the disadvantages under which he 
 laboured, and added 
 
 c There are few branches of science in which he did not 
 
Life and Discoveries cf D alt on. 307 
 
 either excel, or of which he had not a competent knowledge. 
 Astronomy, optics, pneumatics, chemistry, natural history in 
 general, and botany in particular, may be mentioned. 
 
 c For about eight years,' continues Dalton, ' during my 
 residence in Kendal, we were intimately acquainted. Mr. 
 Gough was as much gratified in imparting his stores of 
 science as I was in receiving them ; my use to him was 
 chiefly in reading, writing, and making calculations and 
 diagrams, and in participating with him in the pleasure re- 
 sulting from successful investigations ; but as Mr. Gough 
 was above receiving any pecuniary recompense, the balance 
 of advantage was greatly in my favour, and I am glad of 
 having this opportunity of acknowledging it.' 
 
 From the year 1784 to 1794, we find Dalton contribut- 
 ing largely to two works, of some celebrity in their day, 
 but now little remembered, entitled, The Gentleman's and 
 the Lady r s Diary. In 1788, he commenced his meteoro- 
 logical observations, which led, directly or indirectly, to all 
 his great discoveries, and were continued till the day before 
 his death. In 1793, he published his first work, Meteoro- 
 hgical Observations and Essays, to which more particular 
 reference will be made hereafter. 
 
 Some time previous to the appearance of that publication, 
 Dalton had thought of qualifying himself to practise either 
 as a physician or a lawyer, and corresponded with a friend 
 in London on the subject. But his views were changed 
 in consequence of the receipt of a letter, by his friend Mr. 
 Gough, from Dr. Barnes, making inquiry for a gentleman 
 to fill the situation of Professor of Mathematics and Natural 
 Philosophy, in the new college, Mosley Street, Manchester. 
 Dalton's offer to undertake the duties was accepted, and he 
 removed, in 1793, to Manchester, where he spent the re- 
 mainder of his days. 
 
308 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 The year after settling in that town, Dalton joined a 
 society, which had been established for some time, under 
 the title of the c Manchester Literary and Philosophical 
 Society.' To the Transactions of this body the most 
 celebrated of all our provincial scientific associations he 
 contributed a series of papers, containing the results or 
 original researches of the highest value. These, along 
 with a few others on kindred subjects, have conferred on 
 the society's periodical publications, best known as the 
 Manchester Memoirs, a celebrity which has extended be- 
 yond the nations of Europe. Dalton resided for about six 
 years within the Mosley Street institution, and continued 
 to officiate there till the college was removed to York, 
 in 1799, when he began to teach mathematics and natural 
 philosophy privately, at the charge, it is said, of eighteen- 
 pence an hour. 
 
 In this humble occupation he was engaged, when, in 
 1804, he unfolded the laws which he had discovered to 
 regulate the proportions in which substances combine 
 chemically with each other, along with the hypothesis, 
 by means of which he accounted for their existence, and 
 expounded them. The laws and the hypothesis are gene- 
 rally, though erroneously, taken together, and included 
 under the single title of his ' Atomic Theory.' 
 
 Here, then, we may, for a while, arrest the course of 
 purely biographical detail, and, leaving Dalton teaching his 
 mathematics at eighteenpence an hour, turn to the con- 
 sideration of his scientific discoveries. 
 
 We need scarcely say that it will not be possible to offer 
 more than the briefest sketch of these ; and that even this 
 will be out of our power, unless we confine ourselves to 
 the chief points in relation to them. We shall select, 
 therefore, his ' Atomic Theory' as the main subject of 
 
Life and Discoveries of ~D alt on. 309 
 
 illustration, and consider his other discoveries as they stand 
 related to it. Great unity, and the impress of intellectual 
 consistency, are stamped on all Dalton's labours. With 
 few exceptions, they bear closely and directly upon each 
 other, and on the atomic hypothesis of combining propor- 
 tion, to which they ultimately led, and round which they 
 naturally group themselves. The method which we shall 
 follow, will serve, accordingly, both to bring out the nature 
 and value of his discoveries in science, and to indicate the 
 train of speculation and inquiry by which he was conducted 
 to them. 
 
 As the first step towards this, we have to consider the 
 laws of proportional combination, which are universally re- 
 ceived as true by chemists. They are four in number, and 
 refer to combination by weighty the laws of combination 
 by volume being excluded from our present inquiry. Three 
 of them were discovered by Dalton ; all of them were 
 brought into new prominence by his labours ; and his 
 atomic theory, or rather hypothesis, as it should be called, 
 is an endeavour to explain them, by assuming a peculiar 
 ultimate constitution of matter, which absolutely necessi- 
 tates their existence. These laws are based upon one, 
 deeper and more fundamental than themselves, which is 
 assumed in their enunciation, and is to the following effect: 
 The same compound consists invariably of the same compo- 
 nents. Water, for example, always consists of oxygen and 
 hydrogen ; common salt, of chlorine and sodium ; ver- 
 milion, of sulphur and mercury. , Exceptions to this law 
 were at one time thought to exist, in the case of certain 
 minerals and native gems, such as garnet, which seemed 
 to exhibit constant physical characters, and yet to vary in 
 their constituent ingredients. But Mitscherlich's discovery 
 of Isomorphism not only solved the difficulty attending the 
 
3 1 o Religio- Chemici. 
 
 consideration of these, but in the end supplied new con- 
 firmation of the law which at first it seemed to contradict. 
 This then premised, we may enter at once on the con- 
 sideration of the following laws : 
 
 The first of these is generally named the law of Definite 
 proportion, but should rather be called the law of Constant 
 Proportion. It teaches, that the elements which form a che- 
 mical compound are always united in it in the same proportion 
 by weight. Water not only consists invariably of oxygen 
 and hydrogen, but the weight of oxygen present is always 
 eight times greater than that of hydrogen. Whether we 
 obtain it from lake, or river, or sea, or glacier, or iceberg ; 
 from rain, or snow, or hail, or dew ; from the structures of 
 plants or the bodies of animals ; whether it has been formed 
 ages ago by the hand of nature, or is produced on the in- 
 stant by mingling together its elements in the most random 
 way, the ratio of its components is immutably the same : 
 eight-ninths of its weight are always oxygen, and the re- 
 maining ninth, hydrogen. It is the same with every com- 
 pound. Common salt always contains 35 parts of chlorine 
 to 22 of sodium ; marble, 22 of carbonic acid to 28 of 
 lime ; vermilion, 16 of sulphur to 101 of mercury. In 
 virtue of this law, a number can be found for every body, 
 simple or compound, expressing the ratio in which (or in a 
 multiple or submultiple of which) it combines with every 
 other. Any series of numbers may be taken to represent 
 these combining ratios, provided the due proportion is 
 maintained among them, so that the number for oxygen 
 shall be eight times greater than that for hydrogen, that for 
 nitrogen fourteen times greater, that for sulphur sixteen 
 times, that for iron twenty-seven times, and so on, accord- 
 ing to the relations which analysis brings out. Different 
 scales of combining numbers are in use among chemists ; 
 
Life and 'Discoveries of D alt on. 3 1 t 
 
 but the only one we need consider is that which makes 
 hydrogen I, and counts from it upwards. The numbers in 
 this scale are all small, and do not, in the majority of cases, 
 go beyond two integers. 1 
 
 It must not be forgotten that such tables represent re- 
 lative, not absolute weights. Of the smallest possible 
 quantity of oxygen which can combine with the smallest 
 possible quantity of hydrogen, we know nothing ; all that 
 we are certain of is, that it is eight times greater than that 
 of hydrogen, whatever that be. None of the numbers 
 taken singly has any absolute value : the 16, for example, 
 which, in tables of the kind we are discussing, stands against 
 sulphur, does not represent 16 grains, 16 millionths of a 
 grain, or any other absolute quantity ; its value appears only 
 when it is taken in connexion with the number attached to 
 hydrogen, to which the quite arbitrary value of I has been 
 given. We may give any value we please to any one of 
 the elementary bodies we choose to fix upon for a com- 
 mencement, and call it I, 10, 100, f , J, or any other integer 
 or fraction ; but here our liberty ceases. The relation be- 
 tween the numbers is absolute, though their individual value 
 is not ; and from the settled figure we must count upwards 
 or downwards, or both ways, so as to maintain inviolate the 
 relative values throughout the series. 
 
 The law we are discussing, as we have already stated, is 
 generally called that of definite proportion, but, as we think, 
 erroneously ; for it asserts something more than that the 
 
 1 In conformity with the universal practice of chemists, in illustrating the laws 
 of combined proportion, we have here, and elsewhere throughout this paper, em- 
 ployed round numbers, cutting off the decimal fractions, by which the exact com- 
 bining proportions exceed or fall short of these. The equivalent of oxygen, for 
 example, is not 8, but 8.01 ; that of nitrogen, not 14, but 14.06} and soon 
 with many others. The equivalents of a few of the elementary bodies are round 
 numbers : carbon is 6 ; calcium, 20 : the greater number are not. 
 
312 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 proportion in which the elements of a compound unite is 
 definite', it affirms, also, that it is constant, or always the 
 same. The elements of a compound must be united in de- 
 finite proportion. A definite weight of water, for example, 
 must consist of a definite weight of hydrogen and of oxy- 
 gen ; but the proportion of these elements might be quite 
 variable, so that one specimen of water should be found to 
 contain I hydrogen to 8 oxygen ; another, 8 hydrogen to i 
 oxygen ; a third, a moiety of either ingredient ; and so on, 
 ad infinitum. 
 
 The native garnet to which reference has already been 
 made, is always a definite compound ; but the proportion of 
 its ingredients varies within wide limits, so that while one 
 specimen contains 27 per cent, of a certain constituent 
 alumina, another does not contain i per cent. The alum 
 pf the dyer may in the same way contain a proportion of 
 peroxide of iron, varying in different specimens from I to 
 90 per cent. ; and differences in the ratio of ingredients as 
 great as these occur in all the combinations of what are 
 called isomorphous bodies. These garnets and alums, how- 
 ever, are in reality mixtures in variable proportions of quite 
 constant compounds, and offer no exception to the law we 
 are discussing, but they illustrate what is manifestly quite 
 possible, that constancy in physical character, and constancy 
 in the nature of the constituent ingredients, might co-exist 
 with inconstancy in the proportion of the latter. Now 
 Dalton's first law affirms, in contradiction to this possibility, 
 that the proportion of elements in a compound is in every 
 case as constant as their nature ; a truth which the title, 
 c Law of definite proportion,' does not bring out, whilst that 
 of constant proportion not only does, but in addition includes 
 all that the former expresses ; for a constant proportion must 
 of necessity be a definite one also. 
 
Life and Discoveries of Dalton. 3 1 3 
 
 For these reasons we press upon the reader the propriety 
 of avoiding the singular and almost unaccountable confusion 
 which exists in many of our best works in the use of the 
 word definite, as equivalent to constant, and name the law 
 that of constant proportion. 
 
 This law applies to all bodies, organic and inorganic, 
 native and artificial, so that in the light of it our earth, with 
 its atmosphere, may be considered as the sum or comple- 
 ment of an almost infinite number of compounds adjusted 
 by weight, and told to the tale ; and in a sense as mathe- 
 matically true as it is poetically sublime, we may under- 
 stand the declaration of an inspired writer, that God has 
 c weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a bal- 
 ance.' 
 
 The law of constant proportion was known before Dai- 
 ton's time, and had been distinctly announced by several 
 chemists in different countries towards the close of last cen- 
 tury. We can scarcely doubt that it had been fully appre- 
 hended, in many quarters, before it was specially proclaimed. 
 Every chemist who undertook the analysis of a substance 
 must have blindly or intelligently taken for granted that it 
 would prove definite in composition ; and most of them, we 
 may readily believe, connected with this a more or less 
 clearly discerned expectation that it would prove constant in 
 composition also. This length, certainly, Bergmann the 
 Swede, our own Cavendish, Lavoisier, and many others, 
 had reached, in their observations and speculations on the 
 combinations of bodies ; but it was made the subject of 
 special demonstration by two German chemists, Wenzel 
 and Richter, and by a French chemist, Proust, who pub- 
 lished their respective works between the years 1777 and 
 1792. The views of the German chemists will come better 
 under our notice when discussing the third law of combin- 
 
3 1 4 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 ing proportion ; those of Proust deserve more particular 
 mention here, as they were published in consequence of a 
 discussion carried on between him and the celebrated 
 French chemist, Berthollet, as to the existence of such a 
 law as the one we are considering. Berthollet asserted that 
 the number of compounds which any two elements can 
 form with each other is quite unlimited, and that constancy 
 of physical characters, such as specific gravity, colour, 
 taste, etc., is no sign of constancy in chemical composition. 
 Proust affirmed, on the other hand, that the number of com- 
 pounds formed by two elements, such as iron and oxygen, 
 is always limited, and often very small ; and that so long as 
 the physical characters remain unchanged, the chemical 
 composition is equally invariable. The evidence adduced 
 by him was so ample and incontrovertible, that the discus- 
 sion ended in satisfying every chemist of the truth of his 
 views. 
 
 The second law of combining proportion is related to the 
 circumstance, that the same elements, in almost every case, 
 combine in more than one proportion to constitute several 
 compounds. Even the beginner will be prepared for this, 
 if he is aware that the chemist has, in the meanwhile, re- 
 duced all kinds of matter to some fifty-six primary ones, 
 and has the whole world to account for out of these. This 
 law is named that of Multiple Proportion^ and enforces the 
 remarkable truth, that when one body combines with an- 
 other in several proportions, the higher ones are multiples 
 of the first or lowest. Oxygen and hydrogen, for example, 
 which in water are united in the ratio of eight of the former 
 to one of the latter, unite to form a second compound, 
 named the peroxide of hydrogen, in which the oxygen is to 
 the hydrogen as 16 to I ; or, the hydrogen remaining the 
 same, there is exactly twice as much oxygen as in water. 
 
Life and Discoveries of Dal ton. 3 1 5 
 
 There are two compounds of hydrogen and carbon remark- 
 able as being the bodies which suggested this law to Dalton. 
 In the one of these (olefiant gas], there are six parts, by 
 weight, of carbon, to one of hydrogen ; in the other (marsh 
 gas, or fire-damp] there are six parts of carbon to two of 
 hydrogen ; or, the weight of carbon being the same in both, 
 there is exactly twice as much hydrogen in the first as in 
 the second. One of the most remarkable examples of this 
 law occurs in the compounds of nitrogen and oxygen, which 
 are five in number. The proportion of nitrogen is the same 
 in all, and may be represented by the number 14, while that 
 of the oxygen, which in the lowest may be expressed by 
 8, in the second is 16, or twice 8 ; in the third, 24, or 
 three times 8 ; in the fourth, 32, or four times 8 ; and in 
 the fifth, 40, or five times 8 ; the higher proportions are 
 multiples of the lowest, by 2, 3, 4, and 5, at which last 
 number, in this case, they stop. In every series of com- 
 pounds we find the same law operating. If a substance 
 can combine with more than eight parts of oxygen, the 
 least next quantity it combines with is 16. It never com- 
 bines with 8 and f rds, 8 and ^ths, 8 and T 9 ot ns > or any other 
 fraction whatever ; but if it overstep the 8, goes right on to 
 the 1 6 before it is again saturated. It may go past the 16, 
 but in that case it cannot stop at any intermediate number, 
 but must proceed to 24. It need not halt at 24, however, 
 if it can go on to 32 ; or at 32, if it can combine with 40 ; 
 and it may pass at once from 8 to 40, or to any other 
 quantity, however large, provided it be a multiple of the 
 original 8. The only unalterable decree is, that what- 
 soever smallest quantity of one body another can combine 
 with, every higher compound must contain in increasing 
 multiples. 
 
 In all the cases referred to, binary compounds have, for 
 
3 1 6 R eligio- C hem id. 
 
 the sake of simplicity, been taken for illustration, and they 
 have been such, that one of the elements has remained 
 constant in quantity, while the other has increased in the 
 higher or more complex compounds, by multiples of the 
 quantity found in the lowest or simplest. But cases are 
 quite common where both of the elements of binary com- 
 pounds, and all those of more complex ones, occur in 
 multiples of their smallest combining quantities. One 
 illustration from a small series of binary compounds may 
 suffice. There are three well-known compounds of iron 
 and oxygen. In the first, we have 27 parts of iron to 8 of 
 oxygen ; in the second, 54 of iron to 24 of oxygen, or the 
 proportion of iron is doubled, and that of oxygen tripled ; 
 in the third, we have 81 iron to 32 oxygen, or the iron 
 tripled and the oxygen quadrupled. 
 
 This law reigns through all nature, and is so manifest, 
 that it scarcely calls for fuller illustration. Those who are 
 quite unfamiliar with chemical speculation, however, may 
 perhaps be able to grasp it more firmly by means of the 
 following comparison : A compound body is with great 
 propriety likened to a chain, while the separate links of 
 which the latter is made up represent its constituent ingre- 
 dients. In accordance with this view, let each of the ele- 
 mentary bodies be represented by a link of a different length. 
 To carry out the analogy fully, there should be a difference 
 also in the material, colour, shape, and other attributes of 
 the different representative links. For the sake of simpli- 
 city, however, we shall exclude the consideration of every- 
 thing but the difference in length, and shall further suppose 
 it to be such that all the links representing hydrogen are 
 one inch long ; those representing oxygen, eight inches 
 long ; those representing nitrogen, fourteen inches long, 
 and so on with the links symbolizing the other elementary 
 
Life and Discoveries of D alt on. 3 1 7 
 
 bodies, according to the differences between the numbers 
 expressing their combining proportions, by weight. If, then, 
 we proceed to construct a chain by attaching these links to 
 each other, the length of the chain will in every case be a 
 multiple of the length of the individual links of which it is 
 constructed. Let us, for example, connect a link of nitro- 
 gen fourteen inches long with one of oxygen eight inches 
 long, which will give us a double link twenty-two inches in 
 length. This is the shortest chain we can have made of 
 these links, and will represent the lowest, or simplest com- 
 pound of nitrogen and oxygen. If we proceed to lengthen 
 it by the addition of oxygen links, we may add a single addi- 
 tional one, or two at once, or five, or ten, or a thousand ; 
 but whatever be the number we add, the length in inches 
 of the part of the chain made up of oxygen links will always 
 be a multiple of the original eight, which expressed the 
 length of a solitary link. No fractional number will ever 
 appear, for the chain is made up of links, none of which can 
 be shortened, so as to be shorter than eight, or lengthened, 
 so as to be longer. 
 
 In like manner, we might weave together, in utter dark- 
 ness, and in the most random way, complicated net-works, 
 consisting of links of different lengths, representing the 
 fifty-six elementary bodies. But when our handiwork was 
 brought to light, and the length of the chain-work con- 
 tributed by each kind of link measured, it would invari- 
 ably prove to be a multiple of the length of the primary 
 links, by the interlacement of which the whole had been 
 fashioned. 
 
 The law of multiple proportion belongs peculiarly to 
 Dalton. He generalized it from a solitary case, that of the 
 compounds of carbon and hydrogen already referred to, 
 where the law at first sight strikes us less than it does in 
 
3 1 8 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 many other cases, as it appears only in the duplication of the 
 numeral I, representing hydrogen, which is taken as unity. 
 It was sufficient, however, to suggest it to Dalton, who 
 unhesitatingly predicted its applicability to all kinds of com- 
 pounds. He had been so far anticipated in this by one 
 chemist, a Mr. Higgins, of Pembroke College, Oxford, 
 afterwards Professor of Chemistry at Dublin. In a work 
 published by that gentleman, in 1789, entitled, A Compara- 
 tive View of the Phlogistic and Antiphlogistic Theories^ he 
 states, according to Dr. Daubeny, that one ultimate particle 
 of sulphur and one of oxygen constitute sulphurous acid, 
 whilst one ultimate particle of sulphur and two of oxygen 
 constitute sulphuric acid ; and, moreover, that in the com- 
 pounds of nitrogen and oxygen the ingredients are to each 
 other in the proportion of I to I, 2, 3, 4, and 5, respec- 
 tively. Mr. Higgins' work excited no attention at the time 
 of its publication, nor for many years after. It was not, 
 indeed, till Dalton's re-discovery and re-announcement of 
 the law, that his views on the subject became generally 
 known. It seems doubtful, indeed, if he was aware of the 
 importance of the law he had discovered, but it should not 
 be denied that he clearly saw and fully announced it as 
 applying to several compounds ; nor should it be forgotten, 
 in estimating his merit, that when he published his views, 
 there existed so very small a number of accurate analyses, 
 that it was impossible to test its truth on any but the most 
 limited scale. But after conceding this, we shall be guilty 
 of no injustice to Mr. Higgins if we say, that had he seen 
 the value and importance of the law as fully as Dalton saw 
 it, he would have done as Dalton did, who spent ten or 
 twelve of the best years of his life in verifying its truth by 
 analyses of as large a series of compounds as he possibly 
 could compass. We shall have occasion again to refer to 
 
Life and Discoveries of Daltcn. 519 
 
 Higgins in connexion with Dalton ; meanwhile we proceed 
 to the consideration of the next law. 
 
 The third law of combination is named that of Reciprocal 
 Proportion^ and is to the effect, that if two bodies combine 
 in certain proportions with a third, they combine in the 
 very same proportions with each other. Thus 16 parts of 
 sulphur combine with 8 of oxygen, and 27 parts of iron 
 combine with 8 of oxygen ; but 16 parts of sulphur is the 
 very quantity that combines with 27 of iron. We may 
 reverse the number : 8 of oxygen combines with 27 of iron, 
 and 16 parts of sulphur with 27 of iron ; but 8 of oxygen 
 is the very number that combines with 16 of sulphur. Or 
 a third time : 8 oxygen and 27 iron combine respectively 
 with 1 6 sulphur, but 27 iron is the quantity that combines 
 with 8 oxygen. 
 
 This law is not only of the greatest theoretical interest, 
 but of the utmost practical value to the chemist. But for 
 its existence, his labours as an analyst would be endless, 
 and the work of a lifetime would go but a short way in 
 ascertaining the combining proportions of a single sub- 
 stance. As it is, however, if the proportion be ascertained 
 in which one body combines with any one other, that, or a 
 multiple or submultiple of that, is the proportion in which 
 it combines with every other with which it can combine at 
 all. A new metal, for example, Didymium, has been dis- 
 covered by the Swedish chemist, Mosander, the combining 
 proportion of which is still uncertain. To ascertain this, it 
 will not be necessary to discover by actual trial what quan- 
 tity of it unites with a certain weight of each of the other 
 elementary bodies : it will suffice to know the proportion in 
 which it unites with one of them, oxygen : this, with the 
 qualification already stated, will be the proportion in which 
 it combines with all the rest. 
 
320 Religio-Chemid. 
 
 It is in relation to this law more than to the others that 
 the combining weights of bodies are named their equivalents 
 the best title by which they can be distinguished. This 
 term expresses, in a way no other does, that a certain weight 
 of one body is equivalent to, or goes as far as, a certain but 
 different weight of another in the construction of a similar 
 compound. One part by weight of hydrogen, for example, 
 goes as far in combining with eight of oxygen to form an 
 oxide, as 27 of iron, 33 of zinc, 98 of platinum, or 199 of 
 gold. These compounds have all the same value ; the 
 weight of oxygen is the same in all, and the 199 parts of 
 gold do not neutralize the 8 of oxygen 199 times more 
 effectually than the one of hydrogen does, but only as well 
 and with the production of a similar compound. The same 
 remark applies to the different but equivalent quantities of 
 all the other substances referred to. 
 
 This law of reciprocal proportion was discovered by the 
 German chemist, Wenzel, already mentioned, who pub- 
 lished his views on the subject in 1777, in a work of great 
 merit, which attracted, however, no attention at the time 
 of its publication. In this he showed, from certain pheno- 
 mena exhibited by neutral salts when they decompose each 
 other, that the proportions in which bodies combine with 
 each other were both constant and reciprocal. His views 
 were taken up and followed out by his countryman, Richter, 
 who began to publish in 1792, and confirmed the truth of 
 Wenzel's conclusions by observations made on the precipi- 
 tation of metals from solution, by each other. Richter's 
 greatest merit, however, consisted in an endeavour to ascer- 
 tain, by a series of most patient analyses bf different salts, 
 the exact weight of acid and base required for mutual satu- 
 ration, and to express this by a number attached to each. 
 
 He spent some twelve years of his life in this labour, and 
 
Life and 'Discoveries of Dalton. 3 2 1 
 
 published various works on the subject, but his views at- 
 tracted as little notice as Wenzel's, and it was not till after 
 his death that Berzelius obtained for them the attention 
 they deserved. All are now agreed, that though his num- 
 bers are wrong, and very far wrong too a remark which 
 applies equally to Dalton's first similar table his name will, 
 ever be honourably connected with the earliest attempt to 
 lay the foundation of quantitative chemistry. 
 
 The fourth and last law we have to consider is a very 
 simple one, and will not require much illustration. It may 
 be called the law of Compound Proportion^ and teaches that 
 the combining proportion of a compound body is the sum 
 of the combining proportions of its components. The 
 combining proportion of water, for example, is found by 
 experiment to be 9 (or a multiple of 9), hydrogen, as before, 
 being taken as unity ; but nine is the sum of 8 parts of oxy- 
 gen, and I of hydrogen, its constituents. The equivalent 
 of carbonic acid appears upon trial to be 22 ; but carbonic 
 acid is found on analysis to consist of 6 parts of carbon and 
 16 of oxygen, which exactly make up 22. The combining 
 weight of lime is 28, but lime consists of 20 calcium and 8 
 
 O ' 
 
 oxygen, which are also 28. Lastly, marble has the com- 
 bining proportion 50, but it is composed of 22 carbonic 
 acid and 28 lime, which are also 50. 
 
 This law is of as much interest and practical value as the 
 preceding one, and supplies the chemist with a most impor- 
 tant means of checking the results of empirical analysis in 
 the case of compound bodies. The merit of discovering it 
 belongs entirely to Dalton. It followed so directly and un- 
 avoidably from his atomic hypothesis, that its existence was 
 implied in the very enunciation of the latter ; and we think 
 we do not err when we say that chemists are so much 
 accustomed to consider that law in the light of this hypo- 
 
 x 
 
j 2 2 R eligio- Che mid. 
 
 thesis, that the possibility of its existence apart from it is 
 altogether forgotten. 
 
 Independent, however, it certainly is of any hypothesis, 
 and it could not have been deduced from the other laws we 
 have just been discussing. Although the atomic hypothesis 
 had never been devised, it might, and certainly would, have 
 been discovered ; and though that hypothesis should prove 
 utterly false, it will remain equally valid, resting, as it does, 
 on the ground of direct experimental evidence. We are 
 the more induced to dwell on this, that even so distin- 
 guished a person as the Rev. Mr. Whewell, Master of 
 Trinity College, Cambridge, has failed to perceive the 
 independence and value of this law of compound propor- 
 tion ; and in the discussion of Dalton's Atomic Theory in 
 the History of the Inductive Sciences, does not so much 
 as once mention or allude to it. The error, whether it 
 arose from ignorance of the law, or from the supposition 
 that it was deducible from the laws of reciprocal and mul- 
 tiple proportion, is almost inexplicable and quite inex- 
 cusable. 
 
 On these four laws modern chemistry is based. It has 
 been said, indeed, of them, that chemistry before their dis- 
 covery was only an art, but by their recognition became a 
 science. But this is to say too much : chemistry as a qua- 
 litative science, i.e.) as a science treating of the qualities 
 or properties of bodies, existed before their discovery, and 
 might have existed in a state of considerable perfection as 
 such, although they had had no place in nature, or that 
 place had never been discovered. Their peculiar effect is 
 to confer upon chemistry the character of a science of quan- 
 tity, which till they were brought to light it did not possess ; 
 but in so doing they widened and made more accurate its 
 range as a science of quality. For, to take but one ex- 
 
Life and Discoveries of D alt on. 3 23 
 
 ample, we could not with absolute certainty affirm that 
 water consists of hydrogen and oxygen, and of nothing else, 
 unless we were able to show that a given quantity of water, 
 subjected to analysis, yields weights of hydrogen and oxygen, 
 which, taken together, are identical with that of the water 
 analysed. 
 
 These laws, it is important to observe, contain in them 
 nothing hypothetical. They sum up the results of the 
 universal experience of chemists (so far as experience can 
 be called universal), of which they are the expressions. 
 With the exception of the law of constant proportion, they 
 were wrought out by Dalton for himself, and by him first 
 fully made known to the world. He did not expound 
 them, however, in the way we have done, but employed in 
 their enunciation the language of the ingenious and beautiful 
 hypothesis which had led him to the discovery of two of 
 them, and supplied a satisfactory explanation of them all. 
 This hypothesis, generally called the Atomic Theory, we 
 are now to consider. 
 
 Dalton began by assuming that matter, although it may in 
 essence be infinitely divisible, is, in fact, only finitely divided, 
 so that it consists of certain ultimate particles or molecules 
 possessed of a definite and unchangeable weight, shape, and 
 size. These particles he named, as others had already done, 
 atoms, from the Greek, aro//,o9 (that which cannot be cut or 
 divided]^ to signify that they were indivisible. The indivi- 
 sibility attributed to them, however, was not affirmed to be 
 absolute, so that they could not by possibility be reduced in 
 dimensions, and broken up into smaller particles, but was 
 held to exist in relation only to the chemical and other dis- 
 integrating forces existing in nature, none of which were 
 supposed able to divide them. According to this view, 
 then, ponderable masses or volumes of the different ele- 
 
324 R eligio- Chem id . 
 
 mentary bodies were supposed to consist of a countless mul- 
 titude of undivided atoms. 
 
 On the shape of these atoms, Dalton offered no opinion, 
 though he thought it probable that they were spherical, and 
 drew them as such in his diagrams. Neither did their size 
 enter as an element into his speculations, and it need not into 
 ours ; all, indeed, that we know on the subject or can affirm 
 is, that they are inconceivably small ; so small, indeed, that 
 to say how many could stand at the same time on the point 
 of the finest needle would be a problem as difficult for the 
 modern physicist, as it was hard for the schoolmen of the 
 middle ages to decide how many angels could be accom- 
 modated at once on the same airy pinnacle. 
 
 Up to this point there was nothing novel in Dalton's 
 views. For centuries an atomic constitution of matter had 
 been held as probable by many, and defended by all the 
 arguments that physics and metaphysics could supply. For 
 the sake of contrasting these earlier views, which were 
 almost purely physical, or referred to the atoms of homoge- 
 neous combinations of matter, with those of Dalton, which 
 were chemical, or had reference to the atoms of hetero- 
 geneous compounds, we shall quote the exposition of one of 
 the ablest of Dalton's predecessors : 
 
 c All things considered,' says Newton, ' it seems probable 
 that God, in the beginning, formed matter in solid, massy, 
 hard, impenetrable, movable particles, of such sizes, 
 figures, and with such other properties, and in such pro- 
 portion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he 
 formed them ; and that these primitive particles, being 
 solids, are incomparably harder than any porous bodies 
 compounded of them ; even so very hard as never to wear 
 or break to pieces, no ordinary power being able to divide 
 what God made one in the first creation.' 
 
Life and Discoveries of Dalton. 325 
 
 Newton, it will be observed, says nothing concerning 
 the weight, either absolute or relative, of his primitive par- 
 ticles. The former was manifestly beyond the reach of 
 human discovery, and nothing was known in his day which 
 could throw any light on the latter. 
 
 It is here that Dalton, introducing the question of weight, 
 leaves Newton behind, and takes not a step, but a stride, in 
 advance of all previous speculators on atomics. His early 
 physical inquiries, as we shall afterwards find, had accus- 
 tomed him to form the clearest and most precise concep- 
 tions of matter as made up of atoms, and as soon as he 
 obtained the faintest glimpse of the laws of combining pro- 
 portion, he connected it with these familiar speculations, so 
 that his atomic hypothesis rose into full perfection before 
 he had completed the analysis of so many as a dozen com- 
 pounds. 
 
 This immediate perfection was given to his hypothesis 
 by the one bold conjecture, that the ultimate atoms of the 
 elementary bodies do not possess the same, but different 
 weights ; and that the difference between their weights is 
 identical with that which subsists between the combining 
 proportions of the elements themselves. As oxygen, for 
 example, has a combining proportion eight times greater 
 than that of hydrogen, so the ultimate atom of oxygen is 
 assumed to be eight times heavier than the ultimate atom 
 "of hydrogen. As the combining proportion of nitrogen is 
 fourteen times that of hydrogen, so the atom of nitrogen 
 is supposed to be fourteen times heavier than that of 
 hydrogen ; and in like manner the relative weights of the 
 atoms of the other elementary bodies are supposed to differ 
 by the same numbers that the relative weights of their 
 combining proportions differ by. Dalton, it will be ob- 
 served, no more than Newton, pronounces on the absolute 
 
326 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 weight of his atoms ; all, in truth, that he could have said 
 on that point would have been, that they were so incon- 
 ceivably light, that it would require millions of the heaviest 
 of them to turn the most delicate balance. But he thought, 
 that if it were possible by any means to select single atoms 
 of each of the elementary bodies, and weigh them, one by 
 one, we should find,y?r^, that different atoms of the same 
 element possessed all the same weight, so that whatever 
 was the absolute weight of any one would be found to be 
 the weight of each of the others of the same kind ; and if 
 one atom of hydrogen weighed the millionth of a millionth 
 of a grain, each of the hydrogen atoms would weigh the 
 millionth of a millionth also ; secondly, we should find that 
 all the oxygen atoms were 8 times heavier than the hydrogen 
 ones ; all the nitrogen, 14 times heavier ; all the silver 
 atoms, 108 times ; all the gold atoms, 199 times heavier. 
 In short, the proportions in which bodies combine with 
 each other are supposed to depend upon the weights of the 
 atoms which make them up, and to be identical with them. 
 All the numbers, accordingly, which before this hypothesis 
 is considered, represent combining proportions, as soon as it 
 is adopted, come to represent weights of ultimate atoms, or 
 atomic weights. 
 
 According to this view, then, when bodies combine 
 together, their ultimate particles do not interpenetrate, or 
 become fused together so that the individuality or identity 
 of any is lost. The atoms only come into close proximity, 
 and lie side by side, or above and below each other ; and 
 when the compound they form is decomposed, they sepa- 
 rate, and reappear with all their original properties. The 
 smallest possible quantity of water is in this way conceived 
 to consist of one atom of hydrogen and one of oxygen, 
 bound together, without loss of the individuality of either, 
 
Life and Discoveries of D alt on. 327 
 
 by the unknown and invisible tie which we term chemical 
 affinity. 
 
 Such is the atomic hypothesis : how beautifully it explains 
 all the laws of combining proportion will appear on a 
 moment's reflection. A law of constant proportion, such as 
 we have learned, must obtain in the combinations of atoms, 
 possessed of the properties Dalton assumed, for their re- 
 lative weights are unalterable, and there is therefore but 
 one lowest, or smallest, proportion in which they can com- 
 bine. The weight of an atom of oxygen is 8, and that of 
 an atom of hydrogen, I. It is impossible, therefore, that 
 their smallest combining proportions, by weight, should be 
 any others than 8 and I. 
 
 A law of multiple proportion is equally necessary, for an 
 atom of one element is the smallest quantity that can be 
 added to a compound containing an atom of it already, and 
 whatever was the weight of the first atom will be that of 
 the second also, so that an exact duplication of the first 
 proportion, without any fractional lack or excess, must take 
 place. And if more than one atom be added at a time, it 
 must be atoms, not an atom and a half, or one and a third, 
 or any other fraction or fragment, for this cannot be, seeing 
 that the atom is indivisible. 
 
 In the five compounds of nitrogen and oxygen already 
 considered, the first, which contained 14 of the former to 8 
 of the latter, was to be taken as a compound of a single atom 
 of each. The second must contain 16 oxygen, because 
 the next highest compound must be one of two atoms ; the 
 third, 24, because there are three atoms, each weighing 8 ; 
 the fourth, 32, because the atom is quadrupled ; and the 
 fifth, of necessity, 40, for a similar reason. 
 
 It is almost unnecessary to continue the application of 
 Dalton's hypothesis to the other two laws, it is so direct 
 
328 R eligio- Che mid . 
 
 and unavoidable. The law of reciprocal proportion is an 
 inevitable result of the constancy in weight of the atom. 
 For if an atom of iron is found to be twenty-seven times 
 heavier than one of hydrogen when weighed along with one 
 of oxygen, and if an atom of sulphur be sixteen times 
 heavier than one of hydrogen when also weighed with 
 one of oxygen, then the atom of iron will continue to 
 weigh 27, and that of sulphur 16, when they are weighed 
 together ; for these were the weights of the iron and the 
 sulphur atoms before they combined ; they remain so dur- 
 ing their combination ; and will reappear so whensoever 
 they separate. In a word, the weight of an atom is a con- 
 stant quantity ; it cannot be lessened, or increased, or an- 
 nihilated. Finally, the law of compound proportion is so 
 necessary, that it was anticipated through this hypothesis 
 before it was found in nature. There could not fail to be 
 such a law, in virtue of the constancy in weight, and the 
 indivisibility of the atom. For the aggregation of atoms 
 does not alter their weight, and the atom cannot divide, 
 so that its weight should be shared among smaller mole- 
 cules. Had the atom been divisible, it might have been 
 otherwise, and when two or more atoms entered into com- 
 bination, they might have broken up into lesser particles, 
 among which the original weight was parcelled out. In 
 this way, the compound made up of them might have had 
 the same, or a smaller combining weight than that pos- 
 sessed singly or together by its components. According to 
 the atomic hypothesis, the combining proportion, or atomic 
 weight of water, is necessarily 9, because it consists of two 
 atoms weighing respectively 8 and I. But if these had not 
 been indivisible, they might have broken up in the act of 
 combining, and yielded not one particle weighing 9, but, 
 for example, nine particles, each weighing I, so that the 
 
Life and Discoveries of Dal ton. 329 
 
 combining weight of each particle of water should have 
 been no greater than that of the original particles of hy- 
 drogen. 
 
 Such, then, was the chemical doctrine of atoms, in its 
 first announcement, as related to the laws of proportional 
 combination by weight. Before we consider the steps by 
 which Dalton was led to its announcement, or proceed 
 curiously to dissect and criticise it, let us stop for a mo- 
 ment to give it the deserved tribute of our admiration. It 
 claims this at our hands, on the twofold ground of its 
 beauty as a method of expressing the order and symmetry 
 of material nature, arid its value as a means of apprehending 
 and inculcating great chemical truths. We may afterwards 
 find it unnecessary to concede to Dalton's atoms the attri- 
 bute of indivisibility, even in the limited extent to which 
 he conferred that property upon them, and see reason to 
 believe that a potential, or virtual, not an actual atom is all 
 that chemistry requires for the solution of her problems : 
 nay, that the potential is better than the actual atom for the 
 explication of many of them. But placing the question of 
 its truth aside for the present, we cannot forbear to mark 
 the grand idea which the Daltonian atomic hypothesis gives 
 us of the law and order which prevail in nature. 
 
 In the light of it, there is nowhere any ' fortuitous con- 
 course of atoms,' as the Roman poet proclaimed of old ; no 
 crash or collision, no strife or warfare, when they meet to- 
 gether, as Milton sang, in relation to the embryon atoms 
 of his chaos. According to this view, the courses of the 
 planets around the sun are not more surely ordered than 
 the movements of these invisible spheres round the centres 
 of force which they obey. Arcturus and Orion know not 
 their places better than each tiny gold or hydrogen atom 
 
3 jo Religio-Chemici. 
 
 which adds its weight to swell the sum-total of the uni- 
 verse. And if poets of old have sung of the music of the 
 spheres which the telescope unfolds to us, poets, we doubt 
 not, will yet be found to sing of the harmony, as true and 
 as wonderful, which attends the movements of those which 
 the finest microscope will never reveal. Nay, we know 
 not that we have to wait for a poet to do so, for one who 
 will never be excelled has declared to us that 
 
 ' There's not the smallest orb . . . 
 But in his motion like an angel sings.' 
 
 We might recur to our simile of the chain-work, and 
 speak of atomic nature as a glorious garment woven out of 
 links of different kinds, which Infinite Wisdom, at the first 
 creation, forged of the shape, and length, and size which it 
 best fitted each of them to possess. 
 
 Or we might liken these atoms to coins stamped in 
 Nature's mint, of definite and unchangeable value, with 
 which she pays all the demands the animate and inanimate 
 world make upon her ; but this illustration falls much be- 
 low the dignity of the theme. 
 
 Rather would we have recourse to that old and familiar, 
 but lofty and suitable one, which speaks of this world as a 
 temple ; a temple built by God to his own glory, and for 
 the good of his creatures. And if we did so, we should 
 speak of it, not as of a Cyclopean wall piled out of un- 
 wieldly and misshapen blocks, flung as if by Titanic hands 
 together ; nor as of a Tower of Babel, where, amidst con- 
 fusion of tongues, one asked for bricks and another gave 
 him mortar ; but as of a structure such as the Hebrew 
 king built to his God, where ' the house, when it was in 
 building, was built of stone made ready before It was brought 
 thither ,' and the ' great stones, costly stones, and hewed 
 stones' were each carved and chiselled to fit its appointed 
 
Life and Discoveries of D alt on. 33 1 
 
 place before the builder began, l so that there was neither 
 hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron heard in the house 
 while it was in building;' but, 
 
 ' Out of the earth, a fabric huge 
 Rose like an exhalation, with the sound 
 Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet 
 Built like a temple.' 
 
 On the atomic hypothesis, considered merely as a fig- 
 ment or artifice for expressing simply the laws of combining 
 proportion, it is unnecessary to say much, its value in this 
 respect is so apparent. To the student who, with difficulty, 
 has been struggling to form a clear conception of equiva- 
 lents, proportions, and the like, which, after all, he appre- 
 hends only as shadowy, ponderable masses of equal value, 
 the passage is like that from morning twilight to full day, 
 when he grasps firmly the idea of different atoms like sepa- 
 rate spheres, each a perfect whole, possessing a definite and 
 unalterable weight. The movements and relations of the 
 equivalent atoms can thereafter be as readily followed in 
 thought by the chemist in his speculations, as those of 
 suns, or of planets and their satellites, by the astronomer, 
 in the calculations which the science of the heavenly bodies 
 demands. Nor is any revelation which chemistry seems 
 destined to undergo, even should it bring about the decom- 
 position of all the so-called elementary bodies, likely to 
 lessen, or even much to alter, the value of the atomic 
 hypothesis, considered as a device for inculcating chemical 
 truths. On this subject, therefore, we say no more, but 
 at once pass to a question of the highest interest. 
 
 The first glimpse of his ' Atomic Theory* was obtained 
 by Dalton in the course of certain researches into the solu- 
 bility of the different gases in water, which he published in 
 
3 3 2 R eligio- Chemici. 
 
 the Manchester Society's Transactions for the year 1803. 
 In 1 804, he c touched upon it in his lectures' in Manchester, 
 and at the Royal Institution in London, and in the same 
 year he explained it in conversation to Dr. Thomson, of 
 Glasgow, who spent a day or two with him at Manchester. 
 
 By the latter chemist, and not by Dalton himself, it 
 was first explicitly made known to the world, in the third 
 edition of his System of Chemistry, published in 1807, four 
 years after its first partial announcement to the Manchester 
 Society. In the same year, Dalton expounded his views 
 in a course of lectures delivered in Edinburgh and in Glas- 
 gow, the greater part of which, however, was devoted to 
 the exposition of his discoveries in relation to heat ; and in 
 1808, the substance of these lectures was published in his 
 well-known work, entitled, New System of Chemical Philo- 
 sophy. We cannot, therefore, consider the atomic theory 
 as having come fully before the world till the latter year. 
 
 Up to the present time, so far as we are aware, no 
 attempt has been made to trace the steps by which Dalton 
 was led to his greatest discovery, although the evolution of 
 these in a systematic way would have strengthened almost 
 incalculably the argument of those who sought to defend 
 his merits against the claims of British and foreign rivals ; 
 and the history of their development would have been 
 welcomed by all who took an interest in scientific inquiry. 
 
 We shall endeavour, so far as our limits permit, to 
 supply this deficiency ; premising, however, that we have 
 not had access to any private sources of information, but 
 derive our knowledge solely from works which are, or may 
 be, in the hands of all. In nearly every one of the memoirs 
 which have been published concerning Dalton and his dis- 
 coveries, we are simply told, in the words of Dr. Thom- 
 son, that the 'atomic theory' first occurred to the former 
 
Life and Discoveries of Dalton. 333 
 
 during his investigation of olefiant gas and carburetted 
 hydrogen, which were imperfectly known when he under- 
 took their investigation. A conclusion naturally drawn 
 from this statement is, that the laws of combining propor- 
 tion were discovered in the course of an analytical inquiry, 
 undertaken expressly for the purpose of ascertaining what 
 they were, and that the atomic hypothesis was devised after 
 the laws were discovered as a means of explaining and ex- 
 pounding them. It was not so, however. On the other 
 hand, we shall presently see that it was in the course of a 
 purely physical inquiry into certain of the properties of a 
 single class of bodies, the gases, that Dalton was arrested 
 by a difficulty which obliged him to analyse several of those 
 which are compound, such as the carburetted hydrogens. 
 The result of these inquiries so completely fell in with his 
 previous speculations, that he flung forth his atomic hypo- 
 thesis as soon as he met with a single case of combination 
 in multiple proportion. 
 
 The path along which Dalton travelled was somewhat 
 like the following : The blind gentleman, Mr. Gough, 
 who exercised so beneficial an influence over his early days, 
 added to his other tastes a love for meteorology. * It was 
 he,' Dalton tells us, c who first set the example of keeping 
 a meteorological journal at Kendal ;' and his pupil appears 
 to have soon acquired a relish for the same study. Doubt- 
 less he was influenced likewise by the magnificent scenery 
 around him, of which he has left some eloquent descrip- 
 tions, and was tempted by the peculiar facilities which the 
 locality of his residence afforded for every kind of meteoro- 
 logical inquiry. At all events, he commenced in 1788 those 
 daily observations which were continued for fifty-five years, 
 and led to the publication, in 1793, of the 'Meteorological 
 Essays,' already referred to. It was impossible for Dalton, 
 
334 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 however, to content himself merely with recording the 
 risings and fallings of the thermometer and barometer, or 
 with counting the number of inches of water in his rain- 
 gauge. Yet to take up meteorology as a science, was to 
 enter on a study which required for its successful prose- 
 cution a knowledge of almost every one of the other phy- 
 sical sciences ; and even their concentrated light, when 
 directed upon it, did not suffice for the solution of more 
 than a small number of the problems which perplexed the 
 student at the time that Dalton entered on his inquiries. 
 The theory of the winds was exceedingly obscure : the 
 connexion between alterations in the temperature of the 
 atmosphere and the fall of rain or dew, or the opposite 
 phenomenon of the spontaneous evaporation of water from 
 the surface of the earth, was completely misunderstood : the 
 nature of the force which elevated the vapour of water into 
 the air, and maintained it and the other gases of the atmo- 
 sphere in a state of equable diffusion through each other, 
 in spite of great differences in relative density, had not been 
 recognised j and the chemical composition of the air, and 
 many other points of the highest importance, were either 
 greatly misapprehended or utterly unknown. Much assist- 
 ance towards the elucidation of these difficulties might 
 doubtless have been derived from works published before 
 Dalton commenced his researches. But a single private 
 library could supply but a very small number of these, 
 and no public collection of books appears to have been 
 within his reach while at Kendal. He was, -moreover, 
 eminently a self-reliant man, and debarred from books, of 
 which, it must be acknowledged, even when he could get 
 them, he was no great reader; he set to work to solve, 
 by actual experiment, the problems which his meteoro- 
 logical studies had brought into view. Little could be done 
 
Life and Discoveries of D alt on. 335 
 
 towards this whilst he resided among the lakes, but as soon 
 as he reached Manchester, he gave himself assiduously to 
 such employment, and the two great objects of his re- 
 searches were the laws which regulated the action of heat 
 in changing the forms of bodies, the discovery of which 
 was certain to throw light upon the questions of dew, rain, 
 hail, evaporation, etc., and the physical constitution of 
 vapours and gases, which bore upon almost every question 
 in meteorology. A very brief review of Dalton's earlier 
 contributions to the Manchester Society's Memoirs will 
 show the exact nature of these inquiries, and serve the 
 important incidental purpose of giving the reader some 
 acquaintance with his purely physical researches. Our 
 space will not allow us otherwise to refer to these, but in 
 commenting thus scantily upon them, we would not omit 
 noticing that, as it has often happened in other cases, the 
 greatness of one of Dalton's discoveries has thrown into 
 shade all his others. It is certain that, although he had 
 never unfolded his views on chemical atomics, he would 
 have taken a very high place among men of science ; and 
 we encourage the belief that the method we are adopting 
 in expounding his views, will have the effect of linking 
 together in their natural connexion his physical and che- 
 mical speculations. 
 
 The first paper, read October 3ist, 1794, is entitled, 
 c Extraordinary Facts relating to the Vision of Colours,' 
 and referred to a remarkable peculiarity in his perception of 
 the tints of bodies which will be considered in another place. 
 The second, read March ist, 1790, contains ' Experiments 
 and Observations to determine whether the quantity of Rain 
 and Dew is equal to the quantity of Water carried off by 
 the Rivers, and raised by Evaporation ; with an inquiry into 
 the origin of Springs ;' and may be considered a demon- 
 
336 R eligio- Chemici. 
 
 stration, in the eighteenth century, of the truth of what the 
 wise king had declared some thousand years before c All 
 the rivers run into the sea, yet is the sea not full ; unto the 
 place from whence the rivers come, thither they return 
 again.' The third communication, read April I2th, 1788, 
 entitled, ' Experiments and Observations on the power of 
 Fluids to conduct heat,' was an ample and satisfactory re- 
 futation of Count Rumford's supposition, that fluids were 
 non-conductors of caloric. It does not, however, particu- 
 larly concern us. In the fourth paper (June 27th, 1800), 
 c Experiments and Observations on the Heat and Cold pro- 
 duced by the mechanical condensation and rarefaction of 
 Air,' he returns to inquiries connected with meteorology. 
 The next contributions, read October 2d, i6th, and 3Oth, 
 1801, but published in one memoir, are his celebrated ' Ex- 
 perimental Essays on the Constitution of mixed Gases ; On 
 the force of Steam or Vapour from Water and other liquids 
 in different temperatures, both in a Torricellian vacuum and 
 in air ; On Evaporation ; On the Expansion of Gases by 
 Heat.' The only section of this elaborate memoir to 
 which we can refer is the first. It affirms the startling and 
 apparently incredible proposition, that c when two elastic 
 fluids, denoted by A and B, are mixed together, there is no 
 mutual repulsion amongst their particles that is, the par- 
 ticles of A do not repel those of B, as they do one another ; 
 consequently, the pressure or whole weight upon any one 
 particle arises solely from those of its own kind.' Guided 
 by this remarkable idea, Dalton proceeds to the considera- 
 tion of mixed gases, and particularly of the atmosphere, 
 and applies his views with great success to the removal of 
 the difficulty attending the consideration of the cause of the 
 constant composition of the air we breathe. To all pre- 
 vious speculators, who denied that the air was a chemical 
 
Life and Discoveries of Dalton. 337 
 
 compound, as Dalton did, there remained unanswered the 
 question How do the constituents of the atmosphere exist 
 in a state of equable diffusion through each other, in spite 
 of the difference in their relative densities ? Should not the 
 heavier, oxygen, be found near the surface of the earth ; 
 the lighter, nitrogen, in the higher regions ? No difference 
 exists in this respect, and Dalton's hypothesis takes away 
 all necessity for there being any. We have referred to this 
 subject with a view to direct the reader's attention to a 
 plate which is placed at the end of the paper, illustrating 
 the constitution of our atmosphere as consisting, according 
 to this hypothesis, of gases self-repulsive, but indifferent to 
 each other. The particles of oxygen are represented by 
 small rhombs or diamonds ; those of nitrogen, by dots ; 
 those of carbonic acid, by triangles ; and those of aqueous 
 vapour, by asterisks. The reader will see the importance 
 of this reference, as showing that, two years before he pub- 
 lished his ' Atomic Theory,' Dalton had accustomed him- 
 self to the most precise views as to the properties of masses 
 or volumes of bodies, resulting entirely from those of their 
 ultimate particles, and pictured these to himself and to 
 others by various significant symbols. There was not, 
 probably, among the men of science of his time one who 
 apprehended more clearly than he did that the properties of 
 any mass, however great, are in every case the sum or the 
 difference, or otherwise the expression, of the properties of 
 the ultimate molecules, particles, or, as he afterwards came 
 to call them, atoms, of which it consists. It is to be ob- 
 served, however, that the word atom nowhere occurs, but 
 is represented in every case by the equivalent term, * ulti- 
 mate particle.' 
 
 We pass over the next paper, which records c Meteoro- 
 logical Observations made at Manchester, from 1793 to 
 
 Y 
 
3 j 8 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 1 80 1,' and take up the succeeding ones, which are closely 
 connected with the essay we have just been discussing. 
 
 The first was read November I2th, 1801, and is en- 
 titled, ' Experimental Inquiry into the proportion of the 
 several Gases or elastic Fluids constituting the Atmosphere/ 
 Its title sufficiently explains its object. It was followed, 
 on January 28th, 1803, by an essay ' On the tendency of 
 elastic Fluids to diffusion through each other ;' a remark- 
 able paper, carrying out the observations of the older pneu- 
 matic chemists, and especially Priestley, that elastic fluids 
 of different specific gravities, if once diffused through each 
 other, do not separate by long standing, so that the heaviest 
 is found lowest, but remain in a state of uniform and equal 
 diffusion. Dalton showed further that gases intermix with 
 each other independently of agitation, although the one be 
 much heavier than the other ; so that carbonic acid, which 
 is twenty-two times heavier than hydrogen, will rise into 
 the latter, and the hydrogen conversely descend into it. 
 The subject was afterwards more fully examined by Pro- 
 fessor Graham, of London, in a memoir of the highest 
 interest. 
 
 We have nearly completed our abstract. The next 
 paper, read October 21, 1803, the last, probably, in which, 
 from its title, c On the Absorption of Gases by Water 
 and other Liquids,' the reader would look for it, contains 
 the first announcement of Dalton's discovery of the laws of 
 combining proportion, and the germ of the ' atomic theory.' 
 After stating the laws which he had found to regulate the 
 absorption of gases by water, he proposes a theory in ex- 
 planation of it, according to which he contends that gases, 
 such as oxygen, nitrogen, carbonic acid, etc., when in 
 aqueous solution, are mechanically mixed with water, not 
 chemically combined with it a view which has not been 
 
Life and Discoveries of D alt on. 339 
 
 adopted by other chemists. c Gases so mixed with water/ 
 says he, ' retain their elasticity or repulsive power among 
 their own particles, just the same in the water as out of it, 
 the intervening water having no other influence, in this 
 respect, than a mere vacuum.' He goes on to compare his 
 gas dissolved in water to a pile of shot c a particle of gas 
 pressing on the surface of water, is analogous to a single 
 shot pressing upon the summit of a square pile of them ;' 
 and on the opposite page he has inserted an engraving of a 
 pyramidal pile of balls left unshaded, with a dark ball sur- 
 mounting the apex. This is entitled, c View of a square 
 pile of shot, etc. The lower globes are to represent par- 
 ticles of water ; the top globe represents a particle of air 
 resting on particles of water.' Further on are two other 
 engravings, the one of a ' Horizontal view of air in water,' 
 the other a ' Profile view of air in water,' in which dots and 
 crosses are taken to represent particles of air, with spaces 
 of water between them. We have specially referred to 
 these engravings, as affording additional illustrations of the 
 hold which a belief in the atomic constitution of matter had 
 taken of Dalton's mind, and the use which he made of it 
 in discussing purely physical problems (or, at least, what he 
 considered such), before he had occasion to apply it to 
 chemical questions at all. At the close of the essay comes 
 the acknowledgment of the difficulty which attends a hypo- 
 thesis of mechanical absorption. If the mingling of gases 
 with liquids, on which they do not act chemically, be but 
 a mechanical action, like the mingling of indifferent gases 
 with each other, how happens it that water dissolves its 
 own bulk of one gas, such as carbonic acid, and only three 
 per cent, of its volume of another, such as oxygen ? We 
 should expect, if the mechanical view were true, that all 
 gases should be equally soluble in water ; for if water act 
 
34 ^ eligio- Chemici. 
 
 as a vacuum would do, it must act in the same way on 
 every gas. Dalton saw the difficulty, and devised a hypo- 
 thesis to overcome it. We give his own words : c Why 
 does water not admit its bulk of every gas alike ? This 
 question I have duly considered, and though I am not ye? 
 able to satisfy myself completely, I am nearly persuaded 
 that the circumstance depends upon the weight and number 
 of the ultimate particles of the several gases : those whose 
 particles are lightest and single being least absorbable, 
 and the others more, according as they increase in weight 
 and complexity.' To this there is a foot-note ' Subse- 
 quent experience renders this conjecture less probable/ 
 And the text is followed by a passage which we print in 
 italics c An inquiry into the relative weights of the ultimate 
 particles of bodies is a subject, as far as I know, entirely new ; 
 I have been prosecuting this inquiry with remarkable success. J 
 On the succeeding page is a ' Table of the relative weights 
 of the ultimate particles of gaseous and other bodies.' 
 This was the first table of atomic weights, and every one of 
 them was wrong, with the exception of hydrogen, which 
 was assumed as unity. We extract four of the numbers : 
 
 Hydrogen i 
 
 Oxygen 5.5 
 
 Carburetted hydrogen from stagnant water . 6.3 
 
 Olefiant gas 5.3 
 
 Such, then, were the steps by which Dalton was con- 
 ducted to the discovery of the laws of combining propor- 
 tions. He was testing, by experiment, the truth of a hypo- 
 thesis as to the cause of the specific solubility of gases in 
 water, which proved in the end to be quite untenable \ but, 
 like Columbus, who missed an El Dorado, but found an 
 America, he discovered something better. From what Dr. 
 Thomson tells us, he was struck by observing that the quan- 
 
Life and Discoveries of ~D alt on. 341 
 
 tity of hydrogen in fire-damp is exactly twice that in heavy 
 carburetted hydrogen, the quantity of carbon being the same 
 in both. His constant reference of the properties of masses 
 to those of their smallest molecules led him at once to con- 
 nect these proportions, in which the carbon and hydrogen 
 occurred, with the relative weights of their ultimate par- 
 ticles. We may suppose him to have reasoned somewhat 
 thus c Hydrogen and carbon are made up of particles 
 which have different weights, the carbon atoms being all 
 six times heavier than the hydrogen ones, but if hydrogen 
 and carbon have atoms differing in relative weights, oxy- 
 gen, nitrogen, and every other elementary substance will 
 have atoms differing in relative weight also ; and these may 
 be ascertained by finding the relative weights according to 
 which the masses made up of them combine with each 
 other.' To Dalton's mind, filled, as it were, already with 
 the conception of everything consisting of atoms, it was 
 only necessary to introduce the additional idea of these 
 atoms differing in relative weight, and all the laws of com- 
 bining proportion rose at once into view. He was gifted 
 with a bold, self-reliant, far-glancing, generalizing spirit, 
 and the researches he had long been prosecuting had doubt- 
 less strengthened greatly that faith in the uniformity of 
 nature's laws which we all inherit as an essential part of our 
 mental constitution. We may believe that, without an 
 effort, and almost instinctively, he would infer that if hydro- 
 gen followed a law of multiple proportion in its higher 
 combinations with carbon, a similar relation would be found 
 to hold in every case where the same elements united to 
 form more than one compound. The detection of the 
 other laws of combining proportion must have been im- 
 mediate ; but this has been so fully illustrated already, that 
 we need not enter on the subject again. It must never be 
 
342 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 forgotten that Dalton's atomic views gave him the same 
 advantage in detecting the laws of chemical combination 
 which they afford us in apprehending and expounding them. 
 
 In confirmation of the view we have taken of the develop- 
 ment of the atomic hypothesis, we would refer to Dalton's 
 contributions to the first six volumes of the ' Manchester 
 Memoirs,' which, gone through consecutively, will conduct 
 every reader, we believe, to the conclusion we have arrived 
 at. It is confirmed by Dalton's reference to the carbu- 
 retted hydrogens already considered, and by the way in 
 which Dr. Thomson introduces the earliest published ac- 
 count of the atomic theory, not while discussing chemical 
 affinity or the laws of combination, but quite abruptly under 
 the head of the density of the gases. Dalton himself always 
 connected his later chemical with his earlier physical dis- 
 coveries. When he published the second edition of his 
 ' Meteorological Essays,' in 1834, forty-one years after the 
 publication of the first, he said, in reference to the few 
 alterations it contained ' I have been the more anxious to 
 preserve the first edition unchanged, as I apprehend it con- 
 tains the germs of most of the ideas which I have since 
 expanded more at large in different essays, and which have 
 been considered discoveries of some importance.' 
 
 We wind up this long discussion with a single remark. 
 Dalton's views of chemical combination, including both the 
 facts and the hypothesis which expressed and explained 
 them, are generally known as his ' Atomic Theory.' To 
 Dalton himself the evidence in support of the existence of 
 ultimate indivisible particles appears to have seemed so 
 conclusive, that he considered the doctrine of atoms in the 
 light of an induction from the data furnished by observation 
 and experiment ; and this without reference to any other 
 than purely physical questions. We cannot, indeed, suffi- 
 
Life and Discoveries of D alt on. 343 
 
 ciently reiterate that he was an atomist before he was a 
 chemist. In his lips, therefore, the name c Atomic Theory' 
 was consistent, and had a clear meaning. It was John 
 Dalton's atomic theory of chemical combining proportions ; 
 his theory of atoms connected with his discoveries in 
 chemistry, so as at once to account for, and to expound 
 them. To those, however, who cannot by any process of 
 generalization establish to their own satisfaction, or to that 
 of others, the actual existence of atoms (and it includes 
 almost every one who thinks on the subject at all), and for 
 whom the doctrine of atoms is only a questionable, and, we 
 may say, an indifferent hypothesis, Dalton's view is ' an 
 atomic hypothesis of combining proportion.' It matters 
 comparatively little, however, whether we say atomic theory 
 or atomic hypothesis, provided we keep perfectly distinct 
 what is matter of assumption concerning atoms, from 
 what is matter of fact concerning laws of combining pro- 
 portion. 
 
 The only chemist who has adopted Dalton's views is 
 Dr. Thomson, who affirms that ' unless we adopt the 
 hypothesis with which Dalton set out namely, that the 
 ultimate particles of bodies are atoms incapable of further 
 division, and that chemical combination consists in the 
 union of these atoms with each other we lose all the new 
 light which the atomic theory throws upon chemistry.' 
 Dalton's other contemporaries Davy, Wollaston, and Ber- 
 zelius on the other hand, protested against confounding 
 the question of atoms with that of combining proportions, 
 and declined to employ the word atom. Davy substituted 
 the term proportion ; Wollaston, that of equivalent the best 
 of all the titles by which the combining weight of a body 
 can be indicated. Notwithstanding this, it is notorious that 
 the word atom is universally employed ; the phrase equiva- 
 
j 44 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 lent comparatively seldom. Some of Dalton's less discrimi- 
 nating admirers have built much upon this, as showing 
 that even the opponents of an atomic view of matter are 
 obliged to use its phraseology. This is true so far as the 
 word atom is concerned ; but in the language of a chemist 
 of the present day, that term has no other meaning than the 
 phrase equivalent ; to which it is preferred only, we believe, 
 because it contains half as many syllables, and is more easily 
 pronounced. Liebig has justly observed that the use of the 
 word atom is like that of the term element. The latter 
 does not signify a body that cannot be, but only one that has 
 not been decomposed ; atom, not a particle which cannot be, 
 but only one which, up to a certain point, has not been 
 divided. Hence the chemist has no scruple in applying the 
 term atom to a group of molecules considered as a whole, 
 although he is quite certain that this compound whole may 
 be, and often is, divided. He speaks, for example, of an 
 atom of water, of carbonic acid, of sugar, and the like. 
 
 The announcement of the atomic theory to the chemists 
 of Europe was like a lighted torch passed round among 
 lamps, trimmed and filled with oil, and ready to be kindled. 
 Some heard with incredulity, like Davy ; others with 
 gladness, like Thomson ; none, probably, without asto- 
 nishment, that the humble teacher of mathematics had 
 extracted more meaning out of his imperfect and even in- 
 accurate analyses than they, even Berzelius and Wollaston, 
 out of their scrupulously exact ones. It was so, however. 
 In Spain, France, Germany, Sweden, and elsewhere, many 
 were seeking to discover the laws regulating chemical com- 
 bination, every one of them probably acquainted with a 
 wider range of chemical phenomena, and a better analyst 
 than Dalton ; but he beat them all. So true is it what 
 
Life and 'Discoveries of D ah on. 345 
 
 Thomas Carlyle says, that ' the eye sees what it brings 
 the power to see.' No great discovery, perhaps, was ever 
 welcomed so heartily and immediately as the announce- 
 ment in the atomic theory of the laws of combining pro- 
 portion. The chemists looked over the analyses recorded 
 for other purposes in their laboratory books, and found on 
 every page ample confirmation of Dalton's discoveries. 
 Davy, Thomson, Wollaston, but above all, Berzelius, 
 furnished every day better proofs than Dalton himself could 
 show, that in every essential point his views were as just 
 as they were beautiful and original. The question of Dal- 
 ton's exact merit was at one time a good deal discussed, 
 and is certain to be made matter of discussion again, as 
 soon as a complete memoir of him is published. The 
 sketch we have given of the path by which the atomic 
 theory was reached enables us, we think, to set at rest the 
 question of the rival claims of Higgins and others. 
 
 In deciding the question of merit in reference to any 
 scientific discovery, three points require in every case to 
 be considered. The first, the question of time Who 
 earliest made the discovery ? The second, the question 
 of desert Who had the greatest merit in making it ? The 
 third, the question of practical effect Who aroused the 
 world by his discovery, and made it tell upon the pro- 
 gress of science ? The last is, if not the only, at least 
 the main point in the popular estimation of the merits of 
 discoverers. It is our office to see that the two former 
 receive at the hands of all equal consideration. 
 
 The question of time admits of no dispute. The law of 
 constant proportion had been recognised by Bergmann and 
 Proust, not to mention others, before Dalton's time, nor 
 did he ever claim its discovery. The law of reciprocal pro- 
 portion was made out completely by Wenzel and Richter, 
 
346 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 in 1777. The law of multiple proportion was recognised 
 clearly and fully by Higgins, in 1/89. The law of com- 
 pound proportion was discovered by Dalton, in 1803. 
 This is the state of matters so far as time is concerned, 
 and leaves no choice in the adjudication of merit in regard 
 to the question of priority of discovery. Justice admits 
 of no degrees. We should be as honest in handling our 
 neighbour's character, as in handling our neighbour's 
 money : as careful to protect the reputation of the for- 
 gotten Higgins, as to exalt the memory of the immortal 
 Dalton. 
 
 So far as intrinsic merit is concerned, we take it for 
 granted that no one will call in question Dalton's honesty^ 
 or doubt that, when he said, ' An inquiry into the relative 
 weights of the ultimate particles of bodies is a subject, as 
 far as I know, entirely new,' he faithfully expressed his 
 entire ignorance of what Wenzel, Richter, and Higgins had 
 done before him. It is certain that, in 1803, the views 
 of these writers were quite unknown in Great Britain, even 
 to those most conversant with the scientific literature of 
 the day, and that Dalton did not become acquainted with 
 the views of Higgins, at least, until the year 1810. If 
 this be acknowledged, it follows that Dalton's merit as a 
 discoverer is at least equal to that of his three predecessors 
 taken together, for he found out for himself the laws which 
 they only made out among them, and brought to light an- 
 other, of which they were ignorant altogether. 
 
 The question of practical effect has been considered 
 already. We have seen that it was Dalton who changed 
 the state of chemistry. Dalton ! who, while his contem- 
 poraries were with difficulty building up a fragment of 
 scaffolding here and there at separate corners, with the 
 far- distant hope of ultimately raising by their combined 
 
Life and Discoveries of D alt on. 347 
 
 efforts the structure of chemistry another storey, was in 
 silence preparing to supplant them all ; Dalton, who, with 
 the aid of a cunning engine of his own devising, uplifted at 
 once the four corners, and planted the stately edifice on a 
 new and stable basement, from which it towered above the 
 bogs and quicksands which had been like utterly to over- 
 whelm it before. 
 
 Four reasons may be given why Dalton's views on com- 
 bining proportion should have attracted more attention than 
 those of his predecessors. First^ Chemistry was riper and 
 readier for the discussion of laws of combination than in the 
 days of Wenzel or Richter, or when Higgins first wrote. 
 
 Secondly, Dalton's atomic hypothesis made the appre- 
 hension of the laws taught by means of it infinitely more 
 easy than it had been before. 
 
 Thirdly^ All the laws of combining proportion were 
 taught together, and made to tell with their united force 
 upon the mind. 
 
 Fourthly, Dalton's high character as a discoverer, and 
 his wide reputation among men of science before he an- 
 nounced his atomic theory, secured for it an immediate 
 attention which was not shown to the works of his less 
 distinguished predecessors. 
 
 In ending the discussion of the question of merit, we 
 would express our hope that no inconsiderate admirer of 
 Dalton will rob his predecessors of their scanty, but hard- 
 earned laurels, to add an insignificant leaf or two to his full- 
 crowned head. He would have been the first himself to 
 reject any such borrowed honours. 
 
 Here we resume the long-dropped thread of biographical 
 detail. Our space will not allow us to prosecute it to any 
 considerable extent. We have deemed it better, however, 
 to discuss at some length those great questions connected 
 
3 4$ Religio- Chemici. 
 
 with Dalton's discoveries and scientific reputation, which 
 have never been brought before the public, than to occupy 
 the reader with matters, however interesting, connected 
 merely with his personal history, many of which have been 
 published already in various ways. 
 
 Between the years 1803 and 1810, Dalton was occupied 
 in the prosecution of analyses to verify his atomic theory ; 
 in teaching mathematics ; and in delivering lectures in 
 Manchester, London, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Leeds, and 
 Glasgow. He was not a fluent speaker, nor had he any 
 great talent for teaching. He declined, however, all the 
 offers made by his friends to provide him with a competency 
 so that he might devote his undivided attention to scientific 
 pursuits. To such overtures he replied, ' that teaching was 
 a kind of recreation, and that if richer, he would not pro- 
 bably spend more time in investigation than he was accus- 
 tomed to do.' 
 
 For many years he had the usual fate of the prophet, and 
 c received no honour in his own country.' He had always 
 around him in Manchester, however, a small circle of 
 appreciating friends, who did all they could to extend his 
 fame. In 1814, they had his protrait painted by Allen, 
 and an engraving was made from it, which has long been 
 out of print. In 1817, they conferred on him a further 
 mark of their esteem by electing him President of the Lite- 
 rary and Philosophical Society, of which he had long been 
 the most distinguished member. He was re-elected every 
 year till his death. 
 
 When Sir John Ross sailed on his first Polar voyage, 
 Government and Sir Humphry Davy together thought it a 
 fitting opportunity for doing Dalton a service, and offered 
 him the post of natural philosopher to the expedition. But 
 he declined the appointment, probably thinking that the 
 
Life and 'Discoveries of Dalton. 349 
 
 North Pole would not present many advantages for con- 
 firming by experiment his atomic theory ; and that if they 
 had been very anxious to serve him, they might have found 
 better means, and nearer home, for so doing. He conti- 
 nued, accordingly, at Manchester, teaching, experimenting, 
 and writing scientific memoirs ; and we find nothing re- 
 markable to record till the year 1822, when he visited 
 France. He carried with him to Paris a single letter of 
 introduction to M. Breguet, a celebrated chronometer- 
 maker, and member of the French Institute. He could 
 not have been introduced in a better quarter. Breguet was 
 well known to the Parisian savans as the inventor of a 
 metallic thermometer which bears his name ; and being 
 wealthy and fond of the society of men of science, was in 
 the habit of assembling them round his table. He was well 
 acquainted, moreover, with Dalton's researches, especially 
 those upon heat, and at a former period had sent him a pre- 
 sent of one of his thermometers. Through Breguet, Dalton 
 was immediately introduced to La Place, and by him to all 
 the more distinguished French philosophers. He was sub- 
 sequently invited to the meetings of the Institute, where he 
 was most heartily welcomed, and during the whole period 
 of his residence in Paris was treated, both in public and in 
 private, as one whom all delighted to honour. 
 
 The generous appreciation of his merits shown by the 
 French, as contrasted with the indifference to these ex- 
 hibited by all but his personal friends and a few men of 
 science among his countrymen, made a strong impression 
 upon Dalton. Although a man of few words, little given to 
 betray his feelings, and very indifferent to applause, he was 
 so moved by his reception as to say, when he returned 
 home ' If any Englishman has reason to be proud of his 
 reception in France, I am that one.' 
 
3 5 o Relig io- Chemici. 
 
 At length his countrymen became more alive to his 
 merits ; and if we have to acknowledge that the Celtic fire 
 of our Gallic neighbours blazed forth into admiration at a 
 time when our colder Saxon natures had scarcely begun to 
 glow, it must be admitted, on the other hand, that when 
 the latter began to warm, they rose steadily to a red, even 
 to a white heat of unbounded admiration. For the last ten 
 years of his life, Dalton was the object of universal esteem 
 among his countrymen. 
 
 In 1826, the Council of the Royal Society of London 
 unanimously awarded to him the royal gold medal of fifty 
 guineas value, placed at their disposal by George iv. But 
 it is to the British Association for the Advancement of 
 Science that Dalton was indebted for the estimation in 
 which latterly he was held. 
 
 He attended its earliest meeting at York, in 1831, where 
 he was seen for the first time by many who had long 
 esteemed him at a distance, and now rejoiced in an oppor- 
 tunity of vying with each other in showing him respect. 
 
 At the next meeting of the Association, held at Oxford, 
 in the following year, the University conferred upon him 
 the title of Doctor of Civil Law. In 1833, wnen tne As- 
 sociation met at Cambridge, the President, Professor Sedg- 
 wick, took a public opportunity of expressing his regret 
 that the University could not honour herself, as the sister 
 one had done, by conferring upon Dalton an honorary de- 
 gree, as these cannot be granted without royal mandamus. 
 At the close of his speech, he announced ' that His Majesty 
 King William iv., wishing to manifest his attachment to 
 science, and his regard for a character like that of Dr. Dal- 
 ton, had graciously conferred on him, out of the funds of the 
 Civil List, a substantial mark of his royal favour.' This 
 ' substantial mark' was a pension 0^150, which was raised 
 
Life and Discoveries of Dalton. 35 i 
 
 to ^300 in 1836. It is not generally known, but we have 
 the best authority for stating it, that the Rev. Dr. Chalmers 
 was the first to rouse the Government to a sense of Dalton's 
 claims. To his purely professional and literary accomplish- 
 ments, the celebrated Scotch divine added no inconsider- 
 able acquaintance with most of the physical sciences, and 
 the widest sympathy with the progress of them all. In early 
 life, he is known to have been an indefatigable experimenter, 
 and has even lectured to select audiences on heat and on 
 chemistry. Knowing well what Dalton's merits were, he 
 visited him at Manchester, and was surprised and pained to 
 find him an obscure, ill-remunerated teacher of Mathematics. 
 Dr. Chalmers lost no time in expostulating, by letter, with 
 Joseph Hume, on the injustice of suffering such a man as 
 Dalton to go unrewarded. His claims were acknowledged 
 even by that rigid economist, and soon after the first pension 
 was accorded him. 
 
 We have already seen that Dalton declined to avail him- 
 self of the offers of his friends to provide him with a com- 
 petency, which should set him free from the necessity of 
 elementary teaching. This was in the days of his robust 
 manhood ; and we think he did right. We know no 
 reason why the man of science, so long as he is full of 
 health, should not take his share in bearing the burden 
 ' under which the whole creation groaneth and travaileth' 
 why he should be exempt from the common lot of earn- 
 ing his bread by the sweat of his brow. We are sure, 
 moreover, that the joys even of a hard-earned independence 
 will more than compensate, in every case, for the fancied 
 advantages of an undeserved and an inglorious leisure. It 
 is very different when age has overtaken the man who has 
 laboured while he had strength, and who has spent his days 
 in extending that knowledge by which all men are gainers. 
 
3 5 2 -^ eligio- Chemici. 
 
 Such a one, even though his studies have been of the most 
 purely speculative and apparently unpractical kind, may fitly 
 be saved from the gripe of poverty ' when the grinders 
 cease because they are few, and those that look out of the 
 windows be darkened,' by the kindness of his less gifted 
 but more wealthy fellow-men. But the claims of the worn- 
 out man of science are still greater, when he has been the 
 author of discoveries which have enabled his quite unscien- 
 tific brethren to ' reap where they had not sown, and gather 
 where they had not strewn.' Then it becomes a matter of 
 justice, not of generosity, that he who has been the in- 
 visible sower of the seed which has produced, in some 
 cases thirty, in some sixty, and in some an hundredfold, 
 should receive his tithe of the fruits of the field. The 
 pension which Government allowed to Dalton might be 
 regarded as a generous gift to the author of c Experiments 
 and an Hypothesis on the Constitution of mixed Gases.' 
 But to him who unfolded the c Atomic Theory' it was only 
 a moderate, we had almost said a niggard dole. Three 
 hundred pounds a year ! What a small fraction was that of 
 the countless sums which he had saved his country which 
 he had won for her. The application of the laws of com- 
 bining proportion to the practical arts enabled the manufac- 
 turer of glass, of soap, of pigments, of medicinal substances, 
 of dyes, of oil, of vitriol, and of many other bodies of great 
 commercial value, to secure their production without waste, 
 or loss, or any unnecessary expenditure. Dalton could tell 
 .such a man, to a grain, the exact quantity of each ingre- 
 dient which required to be added to produce a given com- 
 pound. Three hundred pounds a year! If Joseph Hume 
 could obtain as good an account of every ^300 sent out 
 of the Treasury, he would be a happy man, and England a 
 happy country. 
 
Life and Discoveries of Dalton. 353 
 
 In the same year, 1833, in which Dalton received his 
 first pension, a number of his friends subscribed the sum of 
 ^2000, and employed Chantrey to execute a full-length 
 statue of him in marble. This beautiful work of art, which 
 gives a fine likeness of Dalton, is erected in the entrance 
 hall of the Royal Manchester Institution. 
 
 Dalton went to London to give Chantrey the requisite 
 sittings for his bust, and while there was most cordially 
 welcomed by men of science. Nor was this all. Through 
 the influence of Mr. Babbage, the mathematician, of Lord 
 Brougham, who was then Chancellor, and of some other 
 friends, he was presented to William iv. From the ac- 
 count of a Manchester gentleman who was well acquainted 
 with the facts, we learn that c with great skill all the minute 
 preparations for his appearance in such august presence 
 were made by his friends ; and arrayed in the pompous vest- 
 ments of a Doctor of Oxford, with the scarlet gown and 
 black cap, the silk stockings, the buckles, and the whole 
 paraphernalia of a learned courtier, our townsman mingled 
 in the crowd of soldiers, sailors, statesmen, and divines, who 
 thronged the splendid apartments of St. James's, where he 
 was very graciously received by the King/ Whether his 
 London friends acted wisely in introducing such a man to 
 his Majesty, not as John Dalton, the great chemist, but 
 as Dr. Dalton, of Oxford, we shall not stop to inquire. 
 
 In 1834, Dalton attended the meeting of the British 
 Association at Edinburgh, where every sort of kindness and 
 new honours awaited him. The University conferred upon 
 him the degree of LL.D., the Royal Society elected him 
 a member, and the Town-Council presented him with the 
 freedom of the city. 
 
 In 1835, he was present at the Dublin meeting of the 
 Association ; where all parties, from the Lord-Lieutenant 
 
 z 
 
j 5 4 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 downwards, vied with each other in extending to him the 
 marks of their esteem. 
 
 We have now reached the seventieth year of his laborious 
 career, and it will not surprise the reader that the silver 
 cord should be beginning to be loosed, the golden bowl to 
 be broken at the fountain. 
 
 In 1837, when in his seventy-first year, he suffered from 
 a severe attack of paralysis, which left his right side power- 
 less, and also deprived him of speech. He experienced a 
 second slight attack on the 2ist of the same month, and 
 for some time both his mental and bodily faculties appeared 
 to be much affected. After an illness of some months, 
 however, his health improved, and his mind began to evince 
 something of its former vigour, though his articulation 
 always remained less distinct than before. We are indebted 
 to the Manchester Guardian for these particulars, and from 
 the same able journal we take, with a few slight alterations, 
 the following statements relative to the close of the career 
 of John Dalton : On the i;th of May 1844, he had a 
 third paralytic stroke, which partially deprived him of the 
 use of his right side, and increased the indistinctness of his 
 utterance. He recovered in some degree from this attack 
 also, and on the iQth of July 1844, was present at a meet- 
 ing of the council of the Manchester Literary and Philo- 
 sophical Society, where he received an engrossed copy in 
 vellum of a resolution of that society, passed at its annual 
 meeting, recording ' their admiration of the zeal and per- 
 severance with which he has deduced the mean pressure 
 and temperature of the atmosphere, and the quantity of rain 
 for each month and for the whole year ; with the prevailing 
 direction and force of the wind at different seasons in this 
 neighbourhood, from a series of more than 200,000 ob- 
 servations, from the end of the year 1793 to the beginning 
 
Life and Discoveries of Dalton. 355 
 
 of 1844, being a period of half a century/ Dalton received 
 the resolution sitting, and being unable to articulate a reply, 
 handed a written one, which he had prepared, to his old and 
 attached friend, Peter Clare, Esq., who read as follows : 
 4 I feel gratified by this testimony of kind regard offered to 
 me by my old associates of the Literary and Philosophical 
 Society of Manchester. At my age, and under my infirmi- 
 ties, I can only thank you for this manifestation of senti- 
 ments which I heartily reciprocate.' 
 
 This was the igth of the month ; on the 2/th, Dalton 
 was no more ! 
 
 On Friday, the 26th of July, he retired to his room about 
 a quarter or twenty minutes after nine o'clock ; and going 
 to his desk, on which were usually placed the books in 
 which he recorded his meteorological observations, he 
 entered therein the state of the barometer, thermometer, 
 etc., at nine o'clock ; and added, in the column for remarks, 
 the words ' little rain,' denoting that but little had fallen 
 during the day. His servant observed that his hand trembled 
 more than he had ever before seen it, and that he could 
 scarcely hold the pen. Indeed, the book exhibits, in its 
 tremulous characters and blotted figures, striking proofs of 
 the rapid decay of the physical powers. But there was the 
 same care and corrective watchfulness as ever manifested in 
 this his last stroke of the pen ; for, having written opposite 
 a previous observation, ' little rain this,' he now noticed that 
 the sentence was incomplete, and added the word ' day,' 
 which was the last word that was traced by his tremulous 
 pen. He retired to bed about half-past nine, and spent a 
 restless and uneasy night, but seemed, on the whole, in his 
 usual way when his servant left his bedside at six o'clock 
 next morning. 
 
 About half an hour later, his housekeeper found him in 
 
356 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 a state of insensibility, and before medical attendance could 
 be procured, though it was immediately sent for, he expired, 
 ' passing away without a struggle or a groan, and imper- 
 ceptibly, as an infant sinks into sleep.' 
 
 The news of Dalton's death, although it must have been 
 looked for by many, was heard with sorrow throughout the 
 whole length and breadth of the land. His townsmen, 
 anxious to express their sense of the irreparable loss they 
 had sustained, resolved to give him a public funeral. But 
 this was not enough ; and as an additional mark of respect, 
 his body was ' laid in state ' for a day in the Manchester 
 town-hall, and visited by about forty thousand persons. The 
 funeral itself took place on the I2th of August. ' A pro- 
 cession was formed of nearly a hundred carriages, and many 
 hundred persons on foot ; the windows were lined with 
 spectators, as well as the roofs of the houses ; nearly all the 
 shops and warehouses in the line of the procession, and 
 many in other parts of the town, were closed ; four hun- 
 dred of the police were on duty, each with an emblem of 
 mourning j and the funeral train was about three quarters 
 of a mile in length.' He was buried in the cemetery at 
 Ardwick Green. It has been felt by many that it would 
 have been well if the ' lying in state' at least had been 
 omitted. It lessens the pleasure also with which we other- 
 wise read the accounts of Dalton's burial, to know that the 
 mode adopted in this respect to do honour to his memory 
 was a source of pain and offence to the members of that 
 estimable religious body with which the deceased had al- 
 ways retained connexion. Who were to blame, if the 
 thing is to be accounted as blame-worthy, for this cere- 
 monial, we shall not stop to inquire. It is quite certain 
 that the people of Manchester generally were actuated by 
 no other feeling than that of an earnest desire to honour the 
 
Life and Discoveries of D alt on. 357 
 
 illustrious dead ; and there is something solemn and sublime 
 in the idea of the intelligent thousands of a great city, for- 
 getting for a time the claims of business, attiring themselves 
 in the weeds of woe, and gathering round the bier of a soli- 
 tary scientific recluse. like Dalton. This feeling is height- 
 ened by the thought that it was no questionable hero, no 
 noisy demagogue or destroyer of his species, to whom the 
 multitude were doing this homage, but a true high-priest of 
 nature, and a benefactor of his fellow-men. 
 
 In stature, Dalton was about the middle size, of strong 
 rather than of elegant proportions. The likeness between 
 his head and face and those of Newton was often observed 
 during his lifetime, and is said to have become more strik- 
 ing after death. When engaged in study, a certain air 
 of severity, such as may be seen on the busts of Newton, 
 shadowed his features ; but the gentle smile on his lips 
 showed even the inexperienced physiognomist that it was 
 deep thought, not angry passion, that wrinkled his brow. 
 
 Till his seventieth year he enjoyed robust health, and he 
 was all his lifetime fond of exercise in the open air. He 
 made a yearly journey to his native mountains of Cumber- 
 land and Westmoreland, and climbed Helvellyn, and often 
 also Skiddaw. The afternoon of every Thursday he spent 
 at a bowling-green, where he could join with some con- 
 genial associates in a turn at the old English game of bowls. 
 We have heard a distinguished professor of chemistry tell 
 that he once called for Dalton at his laboratory on a Thurs- 
 day, and was directed to look for him at the bowling-green. 
 Dalton quietly apologized for being out of his laboratory, 
 adding that he liked to take a Saturday in the middle of the 
 week. He was entitled to do so, as he did not take one 
 at the end, the seventh day being always a day of hard 
 labour with him. 
 
3 5 8 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 We have already alluded to a peculiarity in Dalton's 
 vision, which he made the subject of the first paper he 
 read to the Manchester Society in 1794. It consisted in 
 this, that whereas most persons see seven colours in the 
 solar spectrum, he saw only two yellow and blue ; or, at 
 most, three yellow, blue, and purple. He saw no differ- 
 ence between red and green, so that he thought * the face 
 of a laurel-leaf a good match to a stick of red sealing- 
 wax ; and the back of the leaf answers to the lighter red of 
 wafers.' When Professor Whewell asked him what he 
 would compare his scarlet doctor's gown to, he pointed to 
 the leaves of the trees around them. Dalton found nearly 
 twenty persons possessed of the same peculiarity of vision as 
 himself. The celebrated metaphysician, Dugald Stewart, 
 was one of them, and could not distinguish a crimson fruit 
 like the Siberian crab from the leaves of the tree on which 
 it grew, otherwise than by the difference in its form. 
 
 This failure to perceive certain colours is by no means 
 rare, and has excited a great deal of attention. The con- 
 tinental philosophers have named it Daltonism, a name 
 which has been strongly objected to by almost every 
 English writer who has discussed the subject, on the 
 ground of the inexpediency and undesirableness of im- 
 mortalizing the imperfections or personal peculiarities of 
 celebrated men by titles of this kind. If this system of 
 name-giving were once commenced, it is difficult to see 
 where it would end. The possession of a stutter would 
 be called Demosthenism ; that of a crooked spine, Esop- 
 ism ; the lack of an arm, Nelsonism ; and so on, till pos- 
 terity would come to connect the names of our celebrated 
 men, not with their superior gifts, or accomplishments, or 
 achievements, but with the personal defects which distin- 
 guished them from their more favoured fellows. 
 
Life and Discoveries of Dalton. 
 
 Professor Whewell sought to better the matter by nam- 
 ing those circumstanced like Dalton, Idiopts^ from two 
 Greek words, signifying peculiarity of vision. But to this 
 name it was justly objected by Sir David Brewster, that the 
 important consonant p would be very apt to be omitted in 
 hasty pronunciation, and so the last state of the Idiopt 
 be worse than the first. Others have suggested various 
 terms of Greek derivation, such as par achromatism^ none 
 of which, however, are sufficiently distinctive. .The name 
 c Colour-Blindness,' proposed by Sir D. Brewster, seems in 
 every respect unexceptionable. 1 
 
 We are more concerned to know that Dalton supposed 
 the peculiarity of his vision to depend upon the vitreous 
 humour (the liquid which fills up the greater part of the 
 ball of the eye), being in his case of a blue colour, instead 
 of colourless, like water, as it is in the eyes of those who 
 distinguish every tint. His own words are ' It appears, 
 therefore, almost beyond a doubt, that one of the humours 
 of my eyes, and of the eyes of my fellows, is a coloured 
 medium, probably some modification of blue. I suppose it 
 must be the vitreous humour ; 9 otherwise I apprehend it 
 might be discovered by inspection, which has not been 
 done.' 2 
 
 After Dalton's death, in obedience to his own instruc- 
 
 1 The reader who is curious in regard to this matter, will find a very elaborate 
 article on the subject, entitled * On Daltonism, or Colour-Blindness,' in the 
 Scientific Memoirs, an occasional periodical published by Richard Taylor, Red 
 Lion Court, Fleet Street, London. 
 
 [Since this was written, a series of elaborate rerearches have been issued by Dr. 
 Wilson, embodying the results of his observations during several years, on the na- 
 ture and extent of this peculiarity of vision. The volume is entitled ' Researches 
 on Colour-Blindness,' and may be obtained from Messrs. Edmonston and Douglas, 
 Edinburgh.] ED. 
 
 a Manchester Memoirs for 1798, p. 43. 
 
360 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 tions, his eyes were examined by his medical attendant, 
 Mr. Ransome. The vitreous humour was not found, how- 
 ever, to present any blue tinge, but, on the other hand, was 
 of a pale yellow colour : neither did red and green objects 
 looked at, through it, used as a lens, present any difference 
 in tint to an ordinary eye, as they should have done had 
 Dalton's hypothesis proved true. Were his view, indeed, 
 the correct one, blue spectacles should induce the same 
 peculiarity in the eyes of every one, which they are well 
 known not to do. Everything, in truth, points to the 
 cause of the colour-blindness, residing not in the optical 
 apparatus of the eye, but in some peculiar condition of the 
 brain or sensorium. So much for the physique of Dalton. 
 
 In endeavouring to form a conception of his mental pecu- 
 liarities, we shall be assisted by comparing him with some 
 of his great fellow-chemists. The labourers to whom che- 
 mistry has been indebted for its greatest advances admit of 
 a natural division into two great classes. The one of these, 
 and by far the smaller, contains men possessed of enthusias- 
 tic, imaginative, poetical temperaments, of sanguine, hopeful 
 spirits, and great rapidity, subtlety, and comprehensiveness 
 of mind. Such pre-eminently was Davy ; such is the 
 great living chemist Liebig ; and if we accept a very subtle 
 fancy instead of a far-stretching imagination, such too was 
 Priestley. 
 
 The other and larger class consists of men in whom the 
 poetical element was at a minimum, who were characterized 
 by great patience, self-concentration, and perseverance in 
 thinking ; for whom the working motto was, ' Non vi sed 
 seepe cadendo ',' and in whom great self-possession and self- 
 reliance were strongly developed, producing indifference to 
 the opinion of others, and, in extreme cases, an almost re- 
 pulsive hardness, sternness, and severity of character. 
 
Life and Discoveries of Dalton. 361 
 
 To this class belong Black, Cavendish, Wollaston, 
 Bergman, Scheele, Lavoisier, DALTON, and, if we include 
 the living, and confine ourselves to our own country, 
 Faraday, Graham, and Thomson. 1 Thinkers of both these 
 classes have done, and will yet do, excellent service to 
 chemistry. We sum up their peculiarities in a word, if 
 we say, with the late Dr. Henry, that the great object of 
 the first class is to discover truth ; of the second, to avoid 
 error. 
 
 Dalton possessed, in an eminent degree, the charac- 
 teristics of the class to which he belonged. He was so in- 
 different to the opinion of others, that he could never be 
 persuaded to reply to the attempts which at one time were 
 made to exalt Higgins above him ; so self-reliant that, in 
 the face of overwhelming evidence, he refused for a long 
 time to put faith in Gay-Lussac's discoveries concerning 
 combination by volume, because they contradicted a hypo- 
 thesis of his own. To the end of his days he persisted in 
 calling the atomic weight of oxygen 7, though all other 
 chemists were unanimous in making it 8. 
 
 Like Newton, he referred the discoveries he had made, 
 not to the power of genius, but to the industry which he 
 had brought to bear upon their elucidation. At the anni- 
 versary meeting of the Pine Street Medical School, Man- 
 chester, he thus replied to a toast embodying his name : 
 c With regard to myself, I shall only say, seeing so many 
 gentlemen present who are pursuing their studies, that if I 
 have succeeded better than many who surround me, in the 
 different walks of life, it has been chiefly, nay, I may say 
 almost solely, from unwearied assiduity. It is not so much 
 from any superior genius that one man possesses over an- 
 
 1 [Professor Thomas Thomson of Glasgow cannot now be ranked among the 
 great living chemists. He died in 1852.] ED. 
 
362 R eligio- Chemici. 
 
 other, but more from attention to study and perseverance 
 in the objects before them, that some men rise to greater 
 eminence than others. This it is, in my opinion, that 
 makes one man succeed better than another. That is all 
 I shall say concerning myself.' In all this there was no 
 affectation. One who knew Dalton well, said of him 
 during his life, ' If led into a discussion on any branch of 
 science or philosophy with which his name is connected, he 
 never hesitates to explain where his own discoveries begin 
 and end, and what portion of the ground has been trodden 
 by others.' Neither did he hesitate to entitle his volumes 
 on heat and atomics, ' New System of Chemical Philo- 
 sophy.' 
 
 He was very methodical and orderly in his habits. We 
 have seen that the Thursday afternoon was spent in the 
 bowling-green. He was equally regular in attending the 
 meetings of the Society of Friends, at which he was pre- 
 sent twice every Sunday. On the same day, he was in the 
 habit, for more than forty years, of dining at a friend's 
 house ; and even when the family were absent, he paid his 
 accustomed visit. 
 
 His love for truth was very great, of which one striking 
 exampje may be given. A student, who had missed one 
 lecture of a course, applied to him for a certificate of full 
 attendance. Dalton at first declined to give it ; but, after 
 thinking a little, replied c If thou wilt come to-morrow, I 
 will go over the lecture thou hast missed.' 
 
 Such was Dalton ; a simple, frugal, strictly honest, and 
 truthful man. For the independence, gravity, and reserve 
 of his character, he was, doubtless, much indebted to his 
 birth as a Cumberland yeoman, and his long connexion 
 with the Society of Friends. The individuality of his nature 
 showed itself in his great mathematical capacity, his tho- 
 
Life and Discoveries of Dalton. 363 
 
 rough self-reliance and power of patient, persevering work, 
 the native clearness of his intellectual perception, and the 
 extraordinary power of fearless generalization which he 
 brought to bear upon what nature unfolded to him. In 
 the latter quality, in particular, he excelled every one of his 
 scientific contemporaries. 
 
 The inhabitants of Manchester have announced their 
 intention of erecting a monument to Dalton's memory. 
 We trust that the proposition of founding a chair of 
 chemistry, especially for the exposition of chemical atomics, 
 will take the precedence of every other, as the best means 
 of carrying out that intention. Every one, we think, must 
 feel that bronze statues, or other costly erections, would be 
 altogether out of keeping with the character of the plain 
 Quaker man of science. A c Dalton ' chair of chemistry, 
 on the other hand, would be a fitting memorial, and in 
 conformity with the wishes of him whom it is intended to 
 honour. Dalton, it is well known, left the sum of 2000 
 to endow such a chair at Oxford, but revoked it before his 
 death, with the view, it is believed, of giving the money to 
 friends who had assisted him in his early days. 
 
 We would hint, moreover, that even the enduring brass 
 and the everlasting granite crumble down under the tooth 
 of Time, and are at best but dumb remembrancers of him 
 whom they seek to save from oblivion. The living voice 
 of the professor from his chair would keep in perpetual 
 remembrance the name of Dalton, as the paid and appointed 
 chantings and masses of the Roman Catholic priest recall, 
 if but for a moment, the memory of the long-forgotten 
 dead. 
 
 We offer these suggestions with all deference to those 
 who seek, by some befitting token, to keep before us the 
 memory of Dalton, because we should grieve to think that 
 
364 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 a great sum of money had been spent for this purpose in 
 vain. 1 So far as he himself is concerned, we have no fear. 
 Dalton will never be forgotten. He is the second Newton 
 of English physics, and will go down to posterity along with 
 the first. Men will think of them together, and compare 
 them to the double stars which a later astronomy has un- 
 folded to our view each a sun, shedding light on the 
 other ; both stars of the first magnitude, revolving round, 
 and pointing towards a great centre, which they equally 
 make manifest and obey ; even Him who is the first and 
 the last, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the 
 end of all things. 
 
 ' [The results of the deliberations regarding a monument to the memory of 
 Dalton, have been the erection of a bronze statue, opposite the Infirmary in Man- 
 chester, and the naming after him of one of the thoroughfares in that city.] ED. 
 
THOUGHTS ON THE RESURRECTION: 
 
 AN ADDRESS TO MEDICAL STUDENTS. 
 
 c THE children of this world marry, and are given in mar- 
 riage : but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain 
 that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither 
 marry, nor are given in marriage : neither can they die any 
 more : for they are equal unto the angels ; and are the chil- 
 dren of God, being the children of the resurrection. Now, 
 that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, 
 when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the 
 God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a 
 God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him.' 
 Luke xx. 34-38. 
 
 It is a remarkable peculiarity of the Bible, that although 
 one of its chief objects is to reveal to man a future life and 
 a world to come, it avoids, with unfailing reserve, any 
 minute or pictorial description of the immortal body or the 
 heavenly state. 
 
 It offers proofs of their reality, such as fully satisfy the 
 unprejudiced intellect, and fill with delight the sanctified 
 heart j but, unlike the sacred books of all false religions, it 
 furnishes very little for the imagination to lay hold upon ; 
 and even St. John, whose Apocalyptic visions are so far an 
 
3 66 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 exception to the rule of reserve, tells us, in one of his 
 epistles, that c it doth not yet appear what we shall be.' 
 Nor should it be forgotten that the Apocalypse was not re- 
 vealed till long after the Saviour's ascension, and was left 
 to mankind with all its sublime mysteries uninterpreted, a 
 shadow even yet of good things to come. 
 
 And in no part of the Word of God is the silence in 
 reference to the other world more remarkable than in the 
 teachings of the Saviour. He could have told his disciples 
 much regarding the future state, which they longed to 
 know, and about which they doubtless often questioned 
 him, but his answers as to him who asked, * Lord, are 
 there few that be saved?' are such as to silence without 
 gratifying mere curiosity, and to remind the inquisitive 
 questioner that the great problem for him is his personal 
 relation to that invisible world, the secrets of which are 
 only made known to those who have passed within its 
 portal. 
 
 Our Saviour, however, as we see in the case of the 
 sisters of Bethany, before the resurrection of Lazarus, did 
 not refuse to enlighten his followers on the purely spiritual 
 relations of the heavenly world ; and the passage which I 
 have read in Luke xx. 34, forms one of the most striking 
 examples of his mode of referring to these. It is, on the 
 whole, the most full and explicit exposition of the future 
 state of happy human spirits which the Lord Jesus Christ 
 gave upon earth, and none more full or explicit was after- 
 wards dictated by the Holy Spirit to any of the inspired 
 writers. Altogether, accordingly, the passage is a very 
 remarkable one, and worth our consideration for a short 
 season. 
 
 The occasion which led to our Lord's brief discourse was 
 a peculiar one. He was at the period, as we learn from 
 
Thoughts on the Resurrection. 367 
 
 the context, in great favour with the people. He had 
 entered Jerusalem amidst their hosannas. He taught daily 
 in the temple, and c they were very attentive to hear him.' 
 For the time, he was so great an object of interest to the 
 multitude, that the chief priests and the scribes and the 
 chiefs of the people, though thirsting for his blood, dared 
 not lay hands upon htm. They sought, therefore, to 
 entrap him into statements which would render him 
 obnoxious to the Roman Governor ; and just before the 
 incident under notice occurred, they had been signally dis- 
 comfited in their endeavour to extract from him an un- 
 popular, and, from a Roman point of view, a disloyal 
 answer to the ensnaring question, * Is it lawful for us to 
 give tribute unto Caesar, or no ?' 
 
 The Sadducees now appeared more prominently on the 
 scene, perhaps with less malignant intentions towards the 
 Saviour than their more influential and popular rivals the 
 Pharisees, but certainly not less anxious than they were to 
 bring Christ and his doctrine into contempt. They pre- 
 pared, accordingly, with great artfulness, a query which 
 they addressed publicly to the Lord. Their object plainly 
 was to invest with ridicule the doctrine of the resurrec- 
 tion, which they denied, but at the same time to give the 
 Saviour no direct opportunity of vindicating that doctrine, 
 or the Pharisees an occasion of triumphing over them in the 
 presence of the people, as convicted of error. On the other 
 hand, they affected to believe in the resurrection, and, as if 
 sincerely desirous to have a difficulty connected with their 
 belief in it removed, they brought that difficulty in the form 
 of a question before the Saviour. It was founded on a 
 well-known and remarkable statute of the great Hebrew 
 lawgiver, and if, as probably seemed to them not unlikely, 
 Jesus should in his reply disparage an enactment given to 
 
3 6 8 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 the nation by Moses, they might trust to both the Pharisees 
 and the multitude making common cause with them against 
 him. 
 
 Whether the case to which they referred of one woman 
 being successively the childless wife of seven brothers, all 
 of whom she survived, dying a childless widow was the 
 record of an actual fact, or only what lawyers at the present 
 day would call an A B or hypothetical case, is not of 
 much moment. It is quite possible the reference was to 
 a known family history, and the temptation we may feel to 
 pronounce on the improbability of its occurrence will be 
 lessened, if we remember that in the early ages of the 
 Hebrew people, polygamy was sanctioned, and that, as the 
 story of Ruth shows, we must include under the term 
 brethren, not merely brothers and half-brothers, but much 
 more distant kinsmen. This, however, is immaterial. 
 The question, which of this woman's earthly husbands 
 should have her to wife in the resurrection, about which the 
 Sadducees affected so much concern, might, in its essentials 
 at least, have been raised in connexion with the everyday 
 case of a widow contracting marriage. To all the by- 
 standers, in addition to the examples which their own circles 
 of relationship presented, the case of Ruth must have been 
 familiar ; and it may not be inopportune to remark, that by 
 her second marriage, Ruth, whose great-grandson was king 
 David, became an ancestress, according to the flesh, of 
 the Saviour himself. 
 
 At all events our Lord found no fault with the question, 
 but proceeded at once to answer it ; and we may imagine 
 how eagerly the crowd watched for the answer. It was 
 such a question as the idle curiosity of man loves to raise. 
 It had a human interest about it, as affecting the relation 
 in which the different members of a family would stand to 
 
Thoughts on the Resurrection. 369 
 
 each other in another world, if there should prove to be 
 such a thing. At the same time, it apparently involved no 
 moral considerations, so that the most sinful and conscience- 
 stricken among the bystanders might await the reply with- 
 out fear or trembling. The reply was given, silencing and 
 startling all. The mocking question was disposed of in a 
 word : ' In the resurrection ' (to use the language of Mat- 
 thew in describing the scene), ' they neither marry, nor are 
 given in marriage.' But the cunning Sadducees were not 
 allowed to escape. Instead of being credited v/ith their 
 pretended faith in the resurrection, they were pronounced 
 ignorant of the Scriptures and of the power of God. They 
 were told in the hearing of all the people, not only that 
 the resurrection was a certainty, but that the subjects of 
 it would be immortal, the equals of the angels, and that 
 Moses, for whom they affected so much reverence, was a 
 witness to all this, inasmuch as he had recorded the words 
 of Jehovah himself, * I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac, 
 and of Jacob,' a God not of the dead, but of the living. In 
 short, all the doctrines of Scripture in which the Sadducees 
 were notorious disbelievers namely, the rising of the dead, 
 the endless life beyond the grave, the testimony of Moses 
 to both, and the existence of angels were, at their own 
 unwilling instances, pronounced upon and affirmed to be 
 true, in reply to the cunningly devised question, which in 
 their estimation was so framed as to render impossible touch- 
 ing on such points at all. They were utterly silenced, but 
 all who listened were amazed at the reply, and from that 
 day forward, as the evangelists tell us, no one durst ask the 
 Saviour any question. 
 
 It is not, however, with the discomfiture of the Sadducees 
 that we are concerned. We may rather, indeed, be grate- 
 ful to them for having secured to us and to all their mortal 
 
 2 A 
 
370 Religio-Chemici. 
 
 successors, so full and explicit a declaration of the reality 
 and results of the resurrection. 
 
 To some remarks on that great Christian doctrine, as 
 dwelt upon by our Saviour in the memorable words of which 
 we have spoken, and as illustrated by his inspired servants 
 who wrote the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, 
 I now ask your attention. 
 
 I have chosen this subject because, whilst none are more 
 capable than you of appreciating its difficulties, as involving 
 a physical truth concerning the body, many Christian per- 
 sons seem to me to attach much less importance to the 
 future resurrection of their own bodies, than the Bible 
 intended they should do. I do not mean by this to say, 
 that they deny or disbelieve the resurrection. On the 
 other hand, there is probably no Scripture doctrine less dis- 
 puted about than that of the resurrection. Men receive it 
 as a whole, or reject it as a whole. To disbelievers in 
 Christ it has no meaning, or only an unwelcome one. By 
 his followers it is too often regarded, at least in its relation to 
 themselves, simply as a mystery which is not to be denied, 
 but is as little to be understood on this side the grave. In 
 particular, I find some truly pious persons understanding by 
 the resurrection of the body, only an assurance of immor- 
 tality of the soul ; whereas the Bible certainly teaches both 
 doctrines, and, teaching both, must have a special lesson to 
 convey by each. Again, I find devout Christians, especially 
 those who have known much sickness, and have vivid 
 imaginations, looking at the resurrection of their own bodies 
 rather as a trial of faith than an encouragement to perseve- 
 rance. These bodies have been to them sources of so 
 much suffering, that they would rejoice to be done with 
 them for ever, and to go, if it should so please God, un- 
 clothed into the presence of the Father of Spirits. With 
 
Thoughts on the Resurrection. 371 
 
 such a hope, however, no inspired writer has any sympathy. 
 On the other hand, exactly in proportion as they insist on 
 the vileness of the sinful body of fallen man, do they enlarge 
 on the certainty of its future existence, and its fitness to be 
 clothed with glory, honour, and immortality. 
 
 And in so arguing, they but follow the example of their 
 Lord and Master, who ever speaks of the resurrection as 
 the gateway through which, following in his steps, they 
 should ascend to the blessed rest, and become capable of 
 the fruition which he had purchased for them beyond the 
 grave. Witness his statement on the occasion under notice. 
 He announces as a prerogative of the happy dead, the essen- 
 tial or intrinsic and angel-like deathlessness of their future 
 bodies. 
 
 There is something very expressive to my thinking in the 
 words, 'Neither can they die any more." I put the 
 emphasis on the word can. The children of the resurrec- 
 tion are not merely to be walled off, as it were, from all 
 deadly foes and mortal influences, but they are to be ren- 
 dered incapable of death. It shall have no more dominion 
 over them. They shall not only never die, but they shall 
 be undying. 
 
 Few, I think, can have sat beside the deathbeds of 
 others, especially of dear relatives, and witnessed the linger- 
 ing illness and long-protracted agonies which so often pre- 
 cede the last struggle, without looking forward with horror 
 to the possibility of all that agony being endured again. 
 It may be that we misinterpret some of the physical 
 precursors or accompaniments of dissolution, and regard 
 as signs of suffering what are but unfelt movements of the 
 organic machine. It is just as likely, however, on the 
 other hand, that we misconceive some of the tokens of 
 bodily and mental agony, and that what we, for example, 
 
j 7 2 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 regard as painless and serene repose, may be the pent-up, 
 iron-bound anguish and horror of an awful nightmare, the 
 paralysing shadow of a spectral presence. At all events, 
 the death of a sinful mortal is in every case a dread reality, 
 and to be assured that c they who shall be accounted worthy 
 to obtain that world,' shall never know again the dreadful- 
 ness of dying, is a great consolation to all who have seen 
 others die in the Faith, and have hope of a blessed resur- 
 rection themselves. And, as if this were not enough, the 
 Saviour adds, in startling illustration of the reality of the 
 assurance that they do not die any more : c for they are 
 equal unto the angels,' literally angel-equals (iVdyyeAot). The 
 reference here, I apprehend, is not to equality in all respects, 
 which may or may not exist, but to equality in respect of 
 essential immortality ; and the significance of the allusion 
 seems to lie in the fact that an angel is a spirit, I do not say 
 without a body, but without a mortal body ; and thus to be 
 equal to an angel is to be angelically immortal. 
 
 Second in prominence to the statement just noticed, is 
 the revelation of our Saviour, that the resurrection-body is 
 to be in a true sense identical with our present body. The 
 statement with which our Saviour's reply opens, appears to 
 leave this point undetermined, and rather to discountenance 
 than favour the idea that our future bodies shall exhibit 
 relationship to our present ones. There is to be no marry- 
 ing or giving in marriage in the world to come. The 
 closest earthly ties which bind families together shall cease 
 there. We shall seemingly stand alone, and the life that 
 we shall live, shall be, as the closing words of the Lord 
 imply, c a life unto God.' At the same time, however, we 
 are told that God is the ' God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, 
 and the God of Jacob ;' a remarkable statement, and one 
 which especially startled those who heard it. Many prob- 
 
Thoughts on the Resurrection. 373 
 
 ably perceived for the first time that Moses taught that the 
 Lord of Heaven is not merely the omnipotent ruler of a vast 
 assemblage of nameless spirits of just men made perfect, but 
 that he is the God and Father of the children of the resur- 
 rection, each one of whom, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, 
 lives to God, as if he were his only redeemed child. 
 
 Nor is it a special privilege of the ancient patriarchs .thus 
 to have their individuality recognised by God. A pious Jew 
 reading the account which Moses gives of the bush which 
 burned with fire and was not consumed, might infer, from 
 the words of Jehovah, that the great fathers of his race were 
 acknowledged in their glorified personality by God in heaven, 
 and yet hesitate to infer that he might hope for a similar 
 recognition of his own personality, even though he should 
 be carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. But the 
 Saviour includes all those blessed children of the resurrec- 
 tion in the same category : ' For all,' he says, ' live unto 
 him.' Less, accordingly, cannot be deduced from the 
 whole statement, than that among ' the dead that are [or 
 shall be] raised,' are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who after 
 their resurrection shall be recognisably the Abraham, Isaac, 
 and Jacob they were upon earth ; and in like manner, 
 all who rise to glory with them shall preserve, however 
 changed, the identifiable personality they possessed before 
 death. With this element of unchanged personal identity is 
 associated that of recognition by fellow-immortals, as well 
 as by God. On the question of mutual recognition, how- 
 ever, the Saviour says nothing ; nor could a reference to it 
 be expected in a statement the main object of which was to 
 teach all who heard it that heaven is not a place where even 
 the purest earthly passions shall be fed, but a holy habita- 
 tion, where he before whom the unfallen angels veil their 
 faces, is the great and sufficing object of regard. At the 
 
374 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 same time, the doctrine of mutual recognition is, I think, 
 implied in what the Saviour said, Abraham shall know 
 Isaac, and Isaac shall know Jacob ; and the partakers with 
 them of a blessed resurrection shall share their privileges. 
 Or rather, perhaps, I should express it thus : The patri- 
 archs and their fellow-heirs of glory shall be susceptible of 
 mutual recognition, and if recognition does not openly take 
 place, it shall be for other and higher reasons than that the 
 conditions of its occurrence are not provided. But this is, 
 after all, a secondary matter, on which it is not at all my 
 purpose to dwell. Whatever be the rule of heaven on this 
 question, we may be quite sure it will be found fully to 
 content us. 
 
 Let us turn from all minor considerations to the great 
 doctrine of the resurrection with which the Saviour silenced 
 the Sadducees, and startled even the most orthodox of the 
 Pharisees, by proclaiming it not only as his own doctrine, 
 but as one which the great lawgiver of the Hebrews had 
 learned from the utterance of God himself, and, ages be- 
 fore, had taught to all the people. 
 
 The great probability of our souls or spirits surviving 
 death and proving immortal has been realized by the wiser 
 men of many an ethnic race, although Christ, and Christ 
 alone, brought life and immortality to light. But that our 
 bodies should live again, and be made as immortal as our 
 souls, is a result towards which natural theology has never 
 pointed as a conclusion which it could independently reach, 
 or was greatly inclined to favour. The wise Greeks mocked 
 when Paul spake of the resurrection of the dead ; and the 
 wild Africans laugh our missionaries to scorn when they 
 tell them that the dead shall rise again. Yet it is a doctrine 
 which the Saviour put ever in the foremost place teach- 
 ing it in words ; proving its possibility by raising the dead ; 
 
Thoughts on the Resurrection. 375 
 
 and demonstrating its certainty by himself rising from the 
 grave. 
 
 It is impossible, then, to have any sympathy with those 
 who speak as if the resurrection were a secondary or 
 supplementary Christian doctrine. It is a central and 
 cardinal one, and for the following among other reasons : 
 
 Firstly^ It makes our whole existence from its germinal 
 beginning, onwards to its fullest development in the most 
 remote eternity, the evolution of one nature. We are, 
 then, soul and body upon earth. We shall be men, soul 
 and body, in the world to come. We shall not be human 
 existences here, and spiritual existences there ; but human 
 existences in both. We shall be inconceivably changed, 
 ' and it doth not yet appear what we shall be,' but we 
 shall be children of Adam for ever, and our life shall know 
 no break from its first dim dawn to its midday brightness in 
 the world of bliss, or its midnight setting in the world of 
 woe. When we stand before God, in presence of the 
 Great White Throne, and are judged every man according 
 to his works, it shall not be possible for any one to say that 
 the body in which he stands is a strange, untried one, in 
 which on earth he never sinned or repented, and on which 
 it is unjust that punishment should now fall, and unbefitting 
 that glory should come. All transformed though it shall 
 be, the possessor of each body will feel that it is his own 
 once ' sweet flesh.' It will gather round our spirits as a 
 natural garment. The judgment which is given on the 
 deeds done in the body, however woful, will be felt to 
 descend on the very body in which the deeds were done. 
 The tears which God shall, once for all, wipe away from 
 the faces of the blessed, shall assuage the weeping of the 
 very eyes, wonderfully changed, but felt to be the same, that 
 wept day and night upon earth j and the consciousness that 
 
376 R eligio- Chemici. 
 
 it shall never know pain again, shall thrill through the very 
 frame that once agonized in the mortal life, like the ripple 
 on a lake, which, though now serene as the clear sky above 
 it, has in it tokens that it fell from heaven, and has 
 carried with it signs of the battles with the rocks over 
 which it was flung, and the whirlpools in which it wrestled 
 before it reached the land-locked valley below. 
 
 There are, perhaps, no created beings but ourselves to 
 whom this continuity of bodily existence is given. It is at 
 least no prerogative of the lower animals, and it appears to 
 be one of those things which the angels desire to look into. 
 At all events, it confers upon our bodies an awful in- 
 destructibility, at thought of which the enduringness of suns 
 or stars becomes as nothing, and we realize in a new and 
 almost terrible sense, that we are fearfully and wonder- 
 fully made. 
 
 Secondly, The resurrection identifies us with Christ in a 
 very wondrous way ; one, indeed, compared with which all 
 other aspects of the resurrection are of secondary impor- 
 tance. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, we have condensed, 
 as it were, into one shining, burning focus, the light of 
 revelation on this great matter. Jesus Christ the Son of 
 God, the brightness of his glory, and the express image of 
 his person, is declared to have been made a little lower 
 than the angels, for the suffering of death, that he by the 
 grace of God should taste death for every man. As the 
 eldest of his brethren, the nearest to the Father of the 
 children of God, it is affirmed of him that ' forasmuch 
 as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also 
 himself took part of the same ; that through death he 
 might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the 
 devil ; and deliver them who through fear of death were 
 all their lifetime subject to bondage ;' and it is added em- 
 
Thoughts on the Resurrection. 377 
 
 phatically, ' He took not on him the nature of angels, but 
 he took on him the seed of Abraham.' 
 
 Now, what do those statements mean ? They plainly 
 teach us, not as the initiation, but as the echo of the uni- 
 versal evangel, that the Son of God stooped to wear a 
 mortal body, and become the Son of man. They tell us 
 further, that he did so that he might live a human life of 
 holy obedience to his heavenly Father, which should be 
 the one unexampled pattern to the race, of perfect, spotless 
 manliness from the cradle to the grave ; that he might die 
 a sacrificial death, and become a propitiation for the sins of 
 the world ; and they also reveal, that in so dying he laid 
 down a life which none could take from him ; that he left 
 in the grave a body which corruption could not touch ; and 
 that he rose from the dead with the pierced side and cruci- 
 fied hands in which he was slain, as one over whom death 
 had no dominion, who himself held the keys of death and 
 of the invisible world. Further, the Scriptures declare that 
 in the very heaven of heavens, whither he has passed to the 
 right hand of the Majesty on high, he wears, however 
 transcendently glorified, a body which marks him, all divine 
 though he is, as still the Son of man. 
 
 The significance of our resurrection lies in those great 
 revelations. Though the reason for it may be beyond our 
 discovery or apprehension, if we believe the Bible, which 
 alone teaches the doctrine of a resurrection, we cannot but 
 acknowledge the truths on this point which they unfold. 
 The only man (for the sinless Adam is no exception) who 
 faultlessly traversed the entire circle of human obligations, 
 alike to God and man, has never, since the ' Word was made 
 flesh,' except between the crucifixion and the resurrection, 
 ceased to wear a human body. He wears still in all his 
 exaltation what his chosen apostles love to dwell upon as 
 
378 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 his c glorious body ; ' and these facts should be enough to 
 show that we neither follow the example of our Lord and 
 Master, nor his disciples, if we think lightly of the resur- 
 rection. 
 
 And to say this is to say infinitely too little. It was to 
 bless us ; to save us ; to redeem us, that the only begotten 
 Son of God laid aside his glory, and, born of a woman, 
 endured the cross, despising its shame ; and our bodies 
 must be as indispensable to our future as to our present life, 
 else he whom angels worship, and all the hosts of heaven 
 adore, would not, as the First Born among many brethren, 
 give us assurance of his sympathizing humanity by retain- 
 ing the title Son of man, or suffer his servants to exult in 
 the prospect of the Lord Jesus Christ himself changing 
 their bodies, that they may be fashioned like unto his 
 body. 
 
 Our bodies thus, according to Scripture, are immortal 
 realities. Except through the interval between death and 
 resurrection, which, however long, will in a timeless state 
 seem perhaps but a moment, they shall not wait for our 
 souls to acknowledge them, but as independent, co-ordinate 
 existences, will claim half of our individuality as theirs by 
 God's law. In the light of this truth, what deep meaning 
 attaches to the solemn warnings of the apostles, to keep 
 our bodies under subjection ; to flee youthful lusts ; to be 
 temperate in all things. Who that realizes the deathless- 
 ness of his body, will weaken it by intemperance, enervate 
 it by luxury, stain it by licentiousness, or befoul it by 
 crime ! I know not which is more the child of the devil, 
 he who ascetically despises that body in which, before they 
 fell, Adam and Eve stood before God and His angels, naked 
 but not ashamed ; or he who is sorrowful solely because he 
 fears that his soul is in reality immortal, and who would be 
 
Thoughts on the Resurrection. 379 
 
 thankful to have only a body in which to-day he might eat 
 and drink, and to-morrow might die. 
 
 Let us not forget that as in Adam all died, so in Christ all 
 are made alive again. Through the sinful body of the first 
 Adam, death has come upon us all ; through the sinless body 
 of the second, life and immortality have been brought to 
 light. The incarnation of the Son of God was the stooping 
 of the Lord of all beneath the lowly lintel of a human 
 tabernacle. It is now a temple of the Holy Ghost, for all 
 who will listen to him who stands at the door and knocks. 
 Alas ! it is also a habitation of unclean spirits to those who 
 refuse when the Master calleth ! 
 
 It is in both cases an imperishable edifice, and the style 
 of its architecture remains for ever unaltered after death 
 sets his seal upon its closed doors. 
 
 Thirdly, We are made one with God through Christ, 
 whether for weal or woe, by the Saviour having worn on 
 earth a human body, and by his wearing now in heaven 
 that body with which he ascended into glory. The Lord 
 of all has not been ashamed to call us brethren, nor has 
 he shrunk from being born of a woman, and being tried 
 and tempted as we are, though without sin ; and therefore 
 no child of man, whether in this world, or in the world 
 of bliss, or in the world of woe, can refuse allegiance to 
 him as the highest of men, as well as God unapproach- 
 able. 
 
 If such be the case, we cannot give too great heed to the 
 doctrine of the resurrection ; and it is one, I venture to say, 
 which offers fewer obstacles to a candid mind than most 
 contained in revelation ; inasmuch as, being an inscrutable 
 mystery, we must deal with it as a whole. If satisfied, 
 accordingly, that the Holy Ghost affirmed its reality, we 
 can accept it as a matter of faith, on which, when we be- 
 
380 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 come subjects of the great change which it predicts all 
 men will undergo, we shall learn as much at least of its 
 meaning as it is befitting we should know. 
 
 It might seem at first sight that, treating of a great phy- 
 sical change which awaits our bodies, the doctrine of the 
 resurrection should be amenable to the criticism of physi- 
 cal science ; and so assuredly it is, but after all the most 
 sceptical philosopher could but say, when asked if our bodies 
 should rise again, that he could reply neither yes or no. 
 There is not certainly a single fact in physical science 
 which contradicts the possibility of the resurrection ; whilst 
 there are multitudes of facts, such as the phenomena of 
 germination, so grandly referred to by St. Paul in his mag- 
 nificent exposition of the rising of the dead, and the 
 change of the caterpillar into the butterfly, which assist us 
 in believing in the certainty, and even so far in realizing the 
 nature of the great change. 
 
 Yet, doubtless, there are difficulties, as the church of 
 Corinth felt, in vividly appreciating the possibility of the 
 resurrection, and all of you must have experienced them. 
 
 The only effectual cure for doubts of this kind is re- 
 examination, with prayer for Divine guidance, of the proofs 
 that there will be a resurrection. Let us but thoroughly 
 believe that it is a revealed and central doctrine of Scripture, 
 as it so certainly is, and we shall find its mysteriousness 
 no longer dismay us. It was a mystery to the chosen 
 apostles, who had heard Christ proclaim its reality in the 
 presence of all ; who had seen him raise from the dead 
 those who had been laid in the grave ; who, on the Mount 
 of Transfiguration, beheld beside him Moses and Elias, 
 visitants from the invisible world ; who had witnessed him 
 die, and revive, and ascend to heaven ; who had them- 
 selves, in his name, raised the dead. What to them, there- 
 
Thoughts on the Resurrection. 3 8 1 
 
 fore, was a mystery, according to the explicit declarations of 
 Paul and John, may well be one to us. 
 
 At the same time, let me offer you a suggestion on one 
 point. In endeavouring to realize the resurrection to our- 
 selves, not as a mystery which faith alone can receive, but 
 as a physical truth which the intellect can to some extent 
 grasp, we encounter two difficulties : the one of these is 
 very obvious, namely, the total resolution of our bodies 
 after death into their ultimate elements ; the second is less 
 obvious, but in reality more perplexing, namely, that it 
 is manifestly a law of nature, /. ., of God, that the same 
 matter shall be used over and over again in the sustenance 
 of successive generations of living beings, so that, as should 
 seem, instead of virgin -matter being continually brought 
 from the deeper strata of the globe, to be used once and 
 never again in clothing an organism, a certain compara- 
 tively small amount of superficient matter circulates again 
 and again through individual after individual. But if the 
 same matter has formed the bodies of two individuals in 
 different generations, how shall each be provided with a 
 separate body at the resurrection ? 
 
 Now, on this point, I would remark, that from St. 
 Paul's statement in the fifteenth chapter of ist Corinthians, 
 we may infer that the resurrection-body will bear such a 
 relation to the present body, as a tree does to its seed. 
 The spiritual body will be identical with the earthly body 
 in the same way that an oak is identical with an acorn, of 
 which it is the evolution, and to which it is indebted for 
 its being an oak, and not a vine or an elm. In some such 
 way, for I do not at all wish to press the analogy too far, 
 our future bodies shall be the same as our present bodies, 
 and yet different ; and it is only in such a sense we can 
 look for identity. 
 
j 8 2 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 Further, the individuality of a seed, or of a human germ, 
 required for its manifestation only a minute quantity of 
 matter. Let me state the physical fact in reference to 
 a vegetable embryo ; the statement, mutatis mutandis, will 
 apply equally to the embryo of man. The microscopic 
 researches, then, of modern physiology have shown us 
 that an exceedingly small amount of ponderable matter 
 condenses, and, as it were, concentrates in itself the in- 
 dividuality of every germ, vegetable or animal. In other 
 words, the determining power, which, if that germ de- 
 velop into mature existence, makes it infallibly develop 
 into an oak, into a vine, into an elm ; or into a butterfly, 
 into a humming-bird, into an eagle, as the case may be ; 
 this determining power, which constitutes the individuality 
 and continuous identity of the mature organism, is ori- 
 ginally located in a microscopic atom of matter. The 
 moment that germ begins to develop, it exchanges those 
 primary particles for others, not merely, remember, adding 
 others to itself, but giving away, as it were, its original 
 self piecemeal, whilst, by a process utterly mysterious, the 
 individualizing power is transferred to the new particles, so 
 that months after the grain of wheat is dead and gone, a 
 blade and stem, taking their characters from it, grow green 
 and ripen, and finally produce grains identical with the 
 perished one. 
 
 I would, accordingly, remind you, that in speculating 
 on the physical nature of the resurrection, it is not necessary 
 to think of our personal identity as essentially linked with 
 more than an almost infinitesimal quantity of matter. 
 
 It needed all the bulk and weight of matter which have 
 been added between spring and autumn, to secure one 
 single fruitful grain upon the nodding spike of wheat. But 
 the life at the beginning and end of the cycle have been 
 
Thoughts on the Resurrection. 383 
 
 embodied in the narrow compass of a grain, and the inner 
 essential life of that reposes in a central citadel so small 
 that it can barely be seen, and cannot at all be touched, 
 analysed, or weighed. Give to each of us such a cell as 
 the bodily citadel of Mansoul, and we need no more. 
 
 Let me remind you that it is not magnitude, but con- 
 tinuity of body, which the resurrection demands. Death 
 must precede it, but not necessarily destruction of the 
 animal frame. Our Saviour died, but his incorruptible 
 body awaited and received its resurrection. In speaking, 
 however, of the resurrection of the Lord, I cannot but 
 object to the statements of those who allude to the body 
 in which he appeared between the resurrection and ascen- 
 sion, as if that were the body in which he now sits on the 
 right hand of the Majesty on high, or as if it were the type 
 of our resurrection bodies. This is no doctrine of the Bible. 
 It must never be forgotten that Christ was our atoning Me- 
 diator, as well as our perfect exemplar. His resurrection 
 had relation to both his offices ; and as related to the first, 
 it was the reviving of the very body in which he had been 
 crucified, so that the doubting Thomas was free, if his 
 faith had demanded so much, to thrust his fingers into the 
 holes which the nails had made, and his hand into the 
 pierced side. 
 
 But as related to his office as our exemplar, the Saviour's 
 pre-ascension body after his resurrection, differed as much, 
 mutatis mutandis^ from his present heavenly body, as that 
 of Lazarus, seen on earth, did from what it will be when 
 the last trumpet sounds. 
 
 If you have any doubt on this point, recall the fact that 
 even the beloved apostle John declares that ' it doth not 
 yet appear what we shall be,' although both on earth and 
 in vision from heaven he saw more of the personality, if I 
 
384 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 may so speak, of the Saviour than any other of his disciples; 
 and that from first to last even those chosen followers who 
 saw the Transfiguration of Christ, and might therefore be 
 supposed to have had some glimpse of the glorified humanity 
 which now encircles him, only vary without altering the 
 key-note of their consenting declaration, that ' flesh and 
 blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven ;' that mortal 
 eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, what God hath prepared 
 for those who love him ; that it is enough for us to know 
 that we may inherit glory, honour, and immortality ; and 
 that HE saw Christ afar ofF, who declared, ' When I awake, 
 I shall be satisfied with thy likeness.' c Touch me not,' 
 said the risen Saviour in the garden to the adoring Mary, 
 for ' I am not yet ascended to my Father ;' and in such 
 words he yet speaks to us. A change as wondrous, and 
 yet as compatible with unaltered physical identity, as that 
 which he underwent on the Mount of Transfiguration, 
 doubtless attended his ascent to heaven, an act in itself 
 altogether beyond the powers of a human body. You do 
 not, however, imagine that I wish to refer to the heavenly 
 body of Christ as inconceivably like his earthly body. Far 
 from that ; the Scriptures tell us that * every eye shall see 
 him, and they also which pierced him,' so that not only 
 the beloved apostle John, and Stephen the martyr, who 
 saw * the Son of man standing on the right hand of God,' 
 and Paul, who, * last of all, as one born out of due time,' 
 fell to the earth before the Jesus whom he had persecuted, 
 shall worship their familiar Lord and Master ; but they 
 alike who, with nail and spear, pierced his hands and side, 
 and all who consented to his crucifixion, and all who since, 
 in this generation, as in others, have crucified the Lord 
 afresh, and put him to an open shame, shall in a moment 
 know him, and, ah me! 'wail before him.' Nor shall 
 
Thoughts on the Resurrection. 385 
 
 it less be seen on that day, that as the Lord knoweth them 
 that are his, they shall know him. One look from his 
 benignant eyes shall be enough, and his blessed ones shall 
 recognise that he looks like a Lamb that was slain, and that it 
 is he who hath washed them from their sins in his own blood. 
 
 But after fully allowing for all this, we must not over- 
 look the unbroken continuity of existence of our Lord's 
 body. And that this is not a prerogative of Him who in 
 all things has the pre-eminence is apparent from the an- 
 nouncement of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, in which, 
 after declaring that the dead in Christ shall rise first, he 
 announces that those being in Christ at his second coming 
 ' shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to 
 meet the Lord in the air.' This passage, taken along with 
 the declaration of the same apostle in I Cor. xv., implies 
 that when the last trumpet sounds, c all shall be changed,' 
 and that this change is the essential of the resurrection. 
 
 Enough, then, of matter to embody our individuality and 
 secure for us a continuous corporeal existence, is all that 
 the resurrection requires. Let us but imagine that it has 
 pleased God to set apart for each child of man so much of the 
 dust of the earth, /.*?., of the chemical elements, as 'shall 
 form this minimum but sufficient medium for the incarna- 
 tion of his individuality ; whilst the Creator also prevents 
 those particles forming the individuality of any other human 
 being, although they may transiently enter into the structure 
 of any number of organisms, to whom for a season they are 
 given in loan. 
 
 And when the last trumpet shall awake us, I imagine that 
 those few germ-particles which were sufficient for our em- 
 bryonic individuality will, unclaimed by any other human 
 being, return to us, and as the true seed of the natural 
 body, be raised and changed into the spiritual body. 
 
 2 B 
 
3 8 6 Religio- Chemici. 
 
 I have offered you this suggestion, but I will not enlarge 
 on it ; rather will I entreat you to remember that no theory 
 can rob the resurrection of its mystery, nor anything but 
 experience of its awfulness, teach us the nature of the in- 
 conceivable change which it will make us undergo. 
 
 But before we part, let us not forget, not only that the 
 resurrection awaits us all, but that it has alternative issues. 
 Even in the passage which we have read, it is not obscurely 
 implied that some only shall be accounted worthy to obtain 
 that world where the children of the resurrection are the 
 children of God. And in another of his public statements, 
 the Saviour declares that when the dead hear his voice, 
 c they shall come forth ; they that have done good, unto the 
 resurrection of life ; and they that have done evil, unto the 
 resurrection of damnation.' 
 
 They shall all be there. All those of whom we have 
 read to-day, the Sadducees and the Pharisees, the scribes, 
 the lawyers, and the people ; and we shall be there, and 
 Christ shall be there. Ah ! let us lay this to heart, and 
 now, in the days of our mortal life, keep our bodies in sub- 
 jection, remembering what a solemn future awaits them, 
 realizing that God desires us to make them temples wherein 
 the Holy Ghost may dwell, and that Christ has shed his 
 precious blood to cleanse us from all sin and uncleanness. 
 
 And we will close with the prayer for one and all of us, 
 that as we have borne the image of the earthly, we may 
 bear the image of the heavenly, and all live unto God ; so 
 that when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, 
 and this mortal shall have put on immortality, we shall be 
 able to say, c Death is swallowed up in victory/ Thanks 
 be unto God, who giveth us the victory, through our Lord 
 Jesus Christ ! Amen. 
 
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