I recommend those who are commencing the study of chemistry with my book to first read only what is printed in the large type, because in that part I have endeavoured to concentrate all the fundamental, indispensable knowledge required for that study. In the footnotes, printed in small type (which should be read only after the large text has been mastered), certain details are discussed; they are either further examples, or debatable questions on existing ideas which I thought useful to lay before those entering into the sphere of science, or certain historical and technical details which might be withdrawn from the fundamental portion of the book. Without intending to attain in my treatise to the completeness of a work of reference, I have still endeavoured to express the principal developments of science as they concern the chemical elements viewed in that aspect in which they appeared to me after long continued study of the subject and participation in the contemporary advance of knowledge. I have also placed my personal views, suppositions, and arguments in the footnotes, which are chiefly designed for details and references.
But I have endeavoured to avoid here, as in the text, not only all that I consider doubtful, but also those details which belong either to special branches of chemistry (for instance, to analytical, organic, physical, theoretical, physiological, agricultural, or technical chemistry), or to different branches of natural science which are more and more coming into closer and closer contact with chemistry. Chemistry, I am convinced, must occupy a place among the natural sciences side by side with mechanics; for mechanics treats of matter as a system of ponderable points having scarcely any individuality and only standing in a certain state of mobile equilibrium. For chemistry, matter is an entire world of life, with an infinite variety of individuality both in the elements and in their combinations. In studying the general uniformity from a mechanical point of view, I think that the highest point of knowledge of nature cannot be attained without taking into account the individuality of things in which chemistry is set to seek for general higher laws. Mechanics may be likened to the science of statesmanship, chemistry to the sciences of jurisprudence and sociology. The general universe could not be built up without the particular individual universe, and would be a dry abstract were it not enlivened by the real variety of the individual world.
Mechanics forms the classical basis of natural philosophy, while chemistry, as a comparatively new and still young science, already strives to—and will, in the future introduce a new, living aspect into the philosophy of nature; all the more as chemistry alone is never at rest or anywhere dead—its vital action has universal sway, and inevitably determines the general aspect of the universe. Just as the microscope and telescope enlarge the scope of vision, and discover life in seeming immobility, so chemistry, in discovering and striving to discern the life of the invisible world of atoms and molecules and their ultimate limit of divisibility, will clearly introduce new and important problems into our conception of nature. And I think that its rôle, which is now considerable, will increase more and more in the future; that is, I think that in its further development it will occupy a place side by side with mechanics for the comprehension of the secrets of nature. But here we require some second Newton; and I have no doubt that he will soon appear.
I was much helped in gathering data from the various chemical journals of the last five years by the abstracts made for me by Mr. Y. V. Kouriloff, to whom I tender my best thanks.