The Romance of Modern Chemistry

 THE DAWN OF CHEMISTRY endeavouring to predict what should be found within, but never making any attempt to effect an entrance, and see how the facts squared with their predictions. In one respect, however, the chemical speculations of the ancient philosophers demand some attention, and that is in regard to the ultimate constituents of the visible world. There were supposed to be four primitive inde- pendent substances or elements, namely, fire, air, earth, and water, by the combination of which in different pro- portions the most varied products could be obtained. According to Empedocles, for example, flesh and blood consist of equal parts of all four elements, while bones are one-half fire, one-quarter earth, and one-quarter water. Ihe word element applied to these primitive inde- pendent substances has scarcely the same meaning as that which we nowadays attach to it, and indeed Aristotle regarded fire, air, earth, and water as the manifestation of different properties carried about by one and the same kind of matter. The four adjectives “warm,” “cold,” “ dry,” and “ moist,” describe the fundamental qualities which he supposed to be associated with this primordial matter, and to each of the four elements were assigned two of these properties. Air was represented as warm and moist, water was moist and cold, earth was cold and dry, fire was dry and warm. All this seems very fantastic, but it was a way of looking at things that was current for a long time after Aristotle, indeed down to comparatively recent times. We may well wonder whether the views which we hold about the origin and composition of the natural world will be thought equally fantastic by our scientific descendants! 20