This work was written during the years 1868–1870, its object being to acquaint the student not only with the methods of observation, the experimental facts, and the laws of chemistry, but also with the insight given by this science into the unchangeable substratum underlying the varying forms of matter.
If statements of fact themselves depend upon the person who observes them, how much more distinct is the reflection of the personality of him who gives an account of methods and of philosophical speculations which form the essence of science!
For this reason there will inevitably be much that is subjective in every objective exposition of science. And as an individual production is only significant in virtue of that which has preceded and that which is contemporary with it, it resembles a mirror which in reflecting exaggerates the size and clearness of neighbouring objects, and causes a person near it to see reflected most plainly those objects which are on the side to which it is directed.
Although I have endeavoured to make my book a true mirror directed towards the whole domain of chemical changes, yet involuntarily those influences near to me have been the most clearly reflected, the most brightly illuminated, and have tinted the entire work with their colouring. In this way the chief peculiarity of the book has been determined.
Experimental and practical data occupy their place, but the philosophical principles of our science form the chief theme of the work.
In former times sciences, like bridges, could only be built up by supporting them on a few broad buttresses and long girders.
In addition to the exposition of the principles of chemistry, it has been my desire to show how science has now been built up like a suspension bridge, supported by the united strength of a number of slender, but firmly-fixed, chains, which individually are of little strength, and has thus been carried over difficulties which before appeared insuperable.
In comparing the science of the past, the present, and the future, in placing the particulars of its restricted experiments side by side with its aspirations after unbounded and infinite truth, and in restraining myself from yielding to a bias towards the most attractive path, I have endeavoured to incite in the reader a spirit of inquiry, which, dissatisfied with speculative reasonings alone, should subject every idea to experiment, encourage the habit of stubborn work, and excite a search for fresh chains of evidence to complete the bridge over the bottomless unknown.
History proves that it is possible by this means to avoid two equally pernicious extremes, the Utopian—a visionary contemplation which proceeds from a current of thought only—and the stagnant realism which is content with bare facts.
Sciences like chemistry, which deal with ideas as well as with material substances, and create a possibility of immediately verifying that which has been or may be discovered or assumed, demonstrate at every step that