JOHN DALTON.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

"Now the true and genuine end of the sciences is no other than to enrich human life with new inventions and new powers. Fruits and discoveries of works are as the vouchers and securities for the truth of philosophies."-LORd Bacon.

IGHT, more light!" was the last utterance of Goethe the poet, playwright, and philosopher. Emanating with the lightning before death, these words were looked upon by the friends and disciples of the renowned German, as the breathings of the oracular spirit, or "primitive divination," that Lord Bacon assigned to men of philosophic genius in the hour of their departure for the unknown bourne. More light is the chief desideratum in the world of thought, as it is the guide and aim of all who strive after the good, the beautiful, and the useful; but of the multitude of workers so disposed, how incomparably few can expect to realise the height attained by Goethe, a great master in art, the founder of German literature, and early promoter of transcendental anatomy.

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Light traverses space with measured yet almost inconceivable rapidity, and reveals countless orbs and a countless time; but the light of ideas, brought to bear upon the interpretation of nature, is but gradatory and fitful in its manifestations, and ever dependent on the happy genesis or moulding of a human being endowed with "the vision and the faculty divine." When this psychological light comes vividly forth in such instances as Da Vinci, Galileo, Harvey, and Newton, it gives rise to new and nobler developments of human thought, and furnishes permanent landmarks in the historical path of science and philosophy.

As chemistry treats of the nature and composition of bodies, its study might have been held of paramount value and attractiveness, as furthering the interests of man in all his advances to material enjoyment and civilisation. Its interest, however, does not seem to have been commensurate with the attention bestowed upon the physical sciences, the laws of which were in part indicated by Ptolemy, and after a long halt by Copernicus, and subsequently so nobly interpreted by the labours of Galileo, Kepler, and Newton. Yet the crude arts of chemistry may be recognised as coeval with the earliest of all human inventions; indeed, every effort to rise above the essential wants of bodily sustenance, and even to aid in that primary step of life, would necessarily call forth the ingenuity of man, seeking to convert the organic growth and inorganic substances of the earth to the increasing of his resources, and the bettering of his physical condition.

Enraptured in belief, and not less prone to the wild

Alchemy and the Occult Arts.

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est of superstitions, the nations of antiquity traced their origin to demigods, prophets, and heroes of the superhuman sort, and to make their pretensions to science consonant with the fabulous character of their history, gave large attention to those dark-age mysteries, astrology and alchemy. The former pursuit (astrology) evoked divination and protean prophecies; the latter (alchemy) dealt largely in mystic arts, from which, after the lapse of centuries, arose tangible data, constituting important accessories to a real science, that of chemistry itself.

A few words on the rise of alchemy, "the sacred and divine art of making gold and silver," may serve as an introduction to the modern science of chemistry, of which John Dalton became the Grand-Master in these latter days of European history. The origin of alchemy is involved in doubt, but the curious in such matters will find the genii of the East, as well as angels and women, credited with a part in the esoteric dogma, upon which probably more arts than that of alchemy were based. The prefix al, in alchemy, is clearly Arabian, possibly invented by the followers of the occult art, to distinguish the doctrine of transmutation from the chemia that embraced only simple chemical operations-in other words, that of vulgar chemistry as disjoined from "the divine art."

In all his attempts to unravel the web of history, man looks to the East for the growth and collateral bearings of his civilisation, and, in endeavouring to fathom the impenetrable problem of his own genesis, and the gradatory lines of his intellectual and moral development, is led to consider the arts, acquirements,

and erudition of the people who occupied the banks of the Nile many thousand years ago. In this (Nile) valley of sunny sky and pure ether-of lands rich in cereal and saccharine growth-man's physical wants were easily sustained, thereby affording him freer scope for the exercise of his understanding and the culture of his genius. No one possessing the opportunity of traversing the land of the Pharaohs can fail to observe that the Egyptians who lived in the palmy days of Luxor and Thebes-upwards of 3000 years before the Christian era-showed an acquaintance with the chemistry of the arts far beyond the general supposition of modern writers. The Egyptian separated metals from their ores, and practised the arts of metallurgy with manifest success; he quarried massive monoliths from the syenite of Assouan, and carved the finest lines on the hardest of granitic structures; he fabricated gold and silver, and jewelled ornaments to deck his person, already beautified by cosmetics and fragrant with essential oils; he wove his linen and woollen stuffs, then bleached and dyed them; and pursuing his chemical operations beyond our knowledge and discovery, adorned his temples and tombs with frescoes of matchless colours and unfading splendour; and lastly, and not least significantly of his chemical skill, embalmed his dead for historic contemplation and wonder, if not for the houris and joys of the everlasting Hades.

The Hindoos, who in their vast temples sought to do honour to the gods, and in pertaining to a knowledge of the cosmic atoms, to teach the general cosmogony; and the Chinese, rejoicing in quaint edifices and quainter attire, that borrowed astronomical em

Chemistry of the Eastern Nations.

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blems for their faith and the propitiation of their deities, were equally alive to the arts of chemistry in their reduction of metallic ores, in the processes of dyeing, the fabrication of paper, earthenware, several salts, and possibly gunpowder itself. Chronologically or not, it is difficult to say, but the Phoenicians, welcomed for their higher arts by King Solomon, and ready to offer the inimitable purples of Tyre to the populations on both sides of the Mediterranean—nay, not content with the intercourse of the Great Sea, navigated their way through the Pillars of Hercules to the Ultima Thule of the geographical world of that day, and made their metallurgical zeal accessory the exploration of Britain itself. In the plastic and pictorial arts, in bronze statuary and diverse artistic methods, the Etruscans proved their aptitude in chemistry as well as technology. In short, all the historical groupings or nations of antiquity left legacies to the world of their manipulative skill, blended with the practice of chemical arts, occasionally, indeed, displaying a degree of excellence in their workmanship that has not as yet been surpassed by modern operators.

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The last breath of the love-inspiring Cleopatra marked the last flicker of the once glorious Egyptian lamp. Then came Cæsarism, that sought to carve Roman fame in every land, even at the cost of a ruthless destruction of the archives of the Pharaohs -an act of Vandalism on the part of Diocletian that future ages can never forget.*

* Gibbon, in his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," chap. xiii., attempts to vindicate Diocletian's destruction of the "Ancient Books" of the Egyptians, on the ground of their containing but “mag