T. E. Thorpe

“ Mr Keir, with his knowledge of the world and good sense; Dr Small, with his benevolence and profound sagacity; ... Boulton, with his mobility, quick perception and bold adventure; Watt, with his strong inventive faculty, undeviating steadiness and bold resources; Darwin, with his imagination, science and poetical excellence; and Day, with his unwearied research after truth, his integrity and eloquence, proved altogether such a society as few men have had the good fortune to live with; such an assemblage of friends as fewer still have had the happiness to possess and keep through life. ”

“ What does Leeds want? A peripatetic university? First in Manchester, then in Leeds, then in Bristol, next in Newcastle? Or will it be content with an affiliation scheme? Do you want to come in now, incomplete as you are, or will you be content to wait till you are developed into more of a two-or three-sided sort of thing? How can the unity of an institution be kept up if all kinds and conditions of other institutions claim an equal voice in all the arrangements? ”

“ Cottle on one occasion said to Coleridge, “During your stay in London you doubtless saw a great many of what are called the cleverest men—how do you estimate Davy in comparison with these?” Mr. Coleridge’s reply was strong but expressive: “Why, Davy can eat them all! There is an energy, an elasticity, in his mind which enables him to seize on and analyse all questions, pushing them to their legitimate consequences. Every subject in Davy’s mind has the principle of vitality. Living thoughts spring up like turf under his feet.” ”

“ Henceforward chemistry was no longer the mere helpmeet of medicine. She became an independent science, the principles of which were to be ascertained by experiment; a science to be studied with the object of discovering the laws regulating the phenomena with which it is concerned—and hence elucidating truth for truth’s sake. The old philosophy of the Greeks had, as we have seen, become merged into the doctrine of the iatro-chemists; and this was now to be purified from the theosophical mysticism with which Paracelsus and his followers had enshrouded it. ”

“ The ultimate effect of this may be that you may evolve a wider and more comprehensive college for higher education. I look to that time with hope, for differentiation of our colleges will be the best thing for learning and for vigour of intellect. Each great provincial town should have a college as a centre of intelligence, each a sun capable of warming and illuminating a region around it, not merely a moon to cast pale and cold beams as a reflection from a distant luminary. ”

“ I rather expect that we shall some day find for what we now call atoms a mathematico-mechanical explanation which will render an account of atomic weight, of atomicity, and of numerous other properties of the so-called atoms. As a chemist, however, I regard the assumption of atoms not only as advisable, but as absolutely necessary, in chemistry. I will even go further, and declare my belief that chemical atoms exist, provided the term be understood to denote those particles of matter which undergo no further division in chemical metamorphoses. ”

“ If the baser metals have not been made to furnish gold, truth at least has followed from the practice of error. This is the only transmutation which the art of Hermes has succeeded in effecting. To err is human. Although alchemy is not without its special interest as one of the most remarkable aberrations in the history of science, some of its practitioners, it must be admitted, deceived only themselves: if misguided, they were at least honest, and pursued their calling in a settled conviction of the soundness of their faith. ”

“ Thus was the ingenious man effectually entangled in his errors, his ingenuity helping him to deceive himself by evading the force of truth. To err is human. If Priestley saw through a glass darkly, and but dimly discerned the truth, he at least strove, so far as in him lay, to reach the light. ”

“ Was not Lancashire, with its many populous manufacturing towns, as fully entitled to the advantages of a university as the cities over the Border? The time had passed for imagining that Oxford and Cambridge, rich and powerful though they were, could do all that England legitimately required in the way of the highest academic culture. Where was the evidence that the establishment of provincial universities would lower the tone of higher education, or that the creation of new avenues to degrees would injuriously affect the reputation of those symbols of culture? ”

“ In every part of the world manufactures made from the mere clay and pebbles of your soil may be found; and to what is this owing? To chemical arts and experiments. You have excelled all other people in the products of industry. But why? Because you have assisted industry by science. Do not regard as indifferent what is your true and greatest glory. Except in these respects, and in the light of a pure system of faith, in what are you superior to Athens or to Rome? Do you carry away from them the palm in literature and the fine arts? ”

“ It may be that the physical atom is something which is not divided, not something that cannot be divided. This theory, dimly perceived in the mists of antiquity, has grown and strengthened with the ages, and in its modern application to the facts of chemistry has acquired a precision and harmony unimagined even by the poets and thinkers of old. We shall see later how the whole course of the science has been controlled, illumined, and vivified by it. It is not too much to say that the chemistry of to-day is one vast elaboration of this primeval doctrine. ”

“ At all periods in the history of chemistry as a science the general tendency has been to name substances, whenever possible, in accordance with the theoretical conceptions of the time, and hence it has happened that the same body at successive periods has had very dissimilar names. But in naming the substances we term elements, theoretical conceptions are not usually applicable. Oxygen, it is true, derives its name from such a conception; and, etymologically, the name connotes an error. Hydrogen, too, has no more right to be called the water former than oxygen. ”

“ Arriving at Dr Priestley’s gate before the mob, he stationed himself withinside till the mob came up, and then addressed them, endeavouring to induce them, by fair words and money, to desist and return home. At first they seemed a little pacified and inclined to listen, till one more loud than the rest, and who had the appearance of a ringleader, cried out, ‘Don’t take a sixpence of his money: in the riots of ’80 in London a man was hanged for only taking sixpence.’ They all then vociferated, ‘Stone him, stone him!’ and began to fling stones. ”

“ THE SAFETY LAMP. Shortly after Davy’s return to England his sympathy was enlisted in a cause which enabled him to display all the attributes of his genius, and to achieve a triumph which, while greatly enhancing his popular reputation, added no little to his scientific fame. To show him how he might be useful, was at all times a certain method of securing his interest; for, like Lavoisier, he was even more the friend of humanity than of science, and to make science serviceable to humanity was, he considered, the highest object of his calling. ”

“ We are grown to be neighbours and yet we arm and arm. Our trade is protected, and for offensive purposes a fleet will arouse little sympathy. Have not both Holland and Belgium a large trade and yet no one thinks of wresting it from them.
Against what is Germany arming if not against England’s command of the sea? Must not every Englishman think so? Has not their mistrust been fostered by our policy, by the utterances of our men of mark, by the opinions of our Press, and last but not least by the propaganda of our Navy League? ”

“ Since that time chemistry has progressed at a rate and to an extent unparalleled at any period of its history. Not only have the number and variety of chemical products—inorganic and organic—been enormously increased, but the study of their modes of origin, properties, and relations has greatly extended our means of gaining an insight into the internal structure and constitution of bodies. This extraordinary development has carried the science beyond the limits of its own special field of inquiry, and has influenced every department2 of natural knowledge. ”

“ It may be, as Davy once said, that “analogy is the fruitful parent of error;” but the idea that metals could be modified—could even be changed one into the other—seemed to find support in innumerable chemical phenomena well known but imperfectly understood. The fact that alchemy—that is the profession of making gold from other metals—came to be practised by rogues is no proof that it never had, and never could have had, a philosophical basis. ”

“ Priestley had now finished with Daventry. He was twenty-two years of age, and ready, and indeed eager, to minister in all the glory of a full-bottomed wig to any congregation that might solicit his services.
The young divines at the academy were an unworldly set, taking but little thought of their future situations in life. ”

“ In his attention to the personal duties of his office Davy was unremitting. His addresses were a feature of the session; in these he displayed all the ardour, eloquence and poetical fervour, and, it may be added, all the egoism, which characterised his lectures. He delighted to dwell upon the power and dignity of science, its worth as a mental instrument, and its value to the national life. In his announcements of the awards of the Society’s medals the range of his knowledge, his power of exposition, and his faculty of felicitous expression found ample opportunity for exercise. ”

“ He pointed to the creation of institutions for secondary and higher education in our large centres of industry as a sign that the country was awakening to the fact that all our great branches of industry were founded on a scientific basis. Although the education—however indispensable it might be—of the eye and the hand could only be acquired by actual practice, it could be nothing short of prejudice to deny that the education of the intellect was also a matter of primary importance. ”

“ Should the progress of science lead to a theory of the constitution of chemical atoms—important as such a knowledge might be for the general philosophy of matter—it would make but little alteration in chemistry itself. The chemical atoms will always remain the chemical unit; and for the specially chemical considerations we may always start from the constitution of atoms, and avail ourselves of the simplified expression thus obtained—that is to say, of the atomic hypothesis. ”

“ Fontana, Lavoisier and others were, indeed, zealously engaged in using Priestley’s own facts to destroy the conception by which he explained them. An appeal to the balance was felt to be necessary, and Priestley, as a logician, could not resist it. But he was no quantitative chemist: the habits of a Cavendish were quite foreign to his genius: patient, scrupulous attention to numerical accuracy was not one of his characteristics: he was one of the most industrious of experimenters—delighting, indeed, in manipulation for the mere sake of it, but withal hasty and superficial. ”

“ The Philosopher’s Stone During the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries the cult of alchemy attained to the dignity of a religion. Belief in transmutation and in the virtues and powers of the philosopher’s stone, in the universal medicine, the alkahest, and the elixir of life, formed its articles of faith. ”

“ It is not necessary to show how the presumptuous youth drove his hobby with all the reckless daring of a Phæton. Phlogiston and oxygen had in turn been the central conceptions of theories of chemistry; phosoxygen was to supplant them. It was to explain everything—the blue colour of the sky, the electric fluid, the Aurora Borealis, the phenomena of fiery meteors, the green of the leaf, the red of the rose, and the sable hue of the Ethiopian; perception, thought, and happiness; and why women are fairer than men. ”

“ Wherever British industry or commerce flourishes there German merchants or manufacturers are found, and there they remain. In our own great cities, in those of our oversea dominions, as well as in our most distant settlements, the ubiquitous German flourishes, and is a welcome strength to the community. What more can England do to assist German trade and industry than she has done and is doing? How can it with any truth be said that England stops Germany from coming out into the sun? ”

“ If extensive and lasting fame be at all an object, literary, and especially scientifical, pursuits are preferable to political ones in a variety of respects.... If extensive usefulness be the object, science has the same advantage over politics. The greatest success in the latter seldom extends farther than one particular country and one particular age, whereas a successful pursuit of science makes a man the benefactor of all mankind and of every age. How trifling is the fame of any statesman that this country has ever produced to that of Lord Bacon, of Newton, or of Boyle ”

“ It has also happened that men who began their scientific career as chemists, like Dalton, Regnault, and Magnus, eventually gave the whole of their energies to physical measurements; or, like Black, Faraday, and Graham, devoted themselves to the elucidation of physical problems. As certain of these physical laws and problems have greatly influenced the progress of chemistry,171 it becomes necessary, in any historical treatment of the subject, to give some account of their origin, and to show how they affected the development of chemical theory. ”

“ I feel peculiar satisfaction in dwelling upon a subject which is of the utmost importance, not only to the great cause of humanity, and to the mining interest of the country, but also to the commercial and manufacturing interests of the United Kingdom; for I am convinced that by the happy invention of the safe lamp large proportions of the coal mines of the empire will be rendered available, which otherwise might have remained inaccessible, at least without an invention of similar utility, which could not have been wrought without much loss of the mineral, and risk of life and capital. ”

“ And if the true opinion of the British and of the German peoples could be obtained who can doubt that it would be in favour of peace and good feeling rather than of hostility and war? But to err is human, and to be misled is easy, so that it behoves those who love progress and hate all that opposes progress to use all efforts to denounce and destroy Chauvinism in every country and in every form. In England Jingoism has practically no power. In Parliament certainly none—witness the speeches lately delivered in both Houses—not one note of ill-feeling towards Germany was heard. ”

“ It is nothing but reason and argument that can ever support any system of religion. Answer your arguments and your business is done; but your having recourse to violence is only a proof that you have nothing better to produce. Should you destroy myself, as well as my house, library and apparatus, ten more persons of equal or superior spirit and ability would instantly rise up. ”

“ It is no unusual occurrence, for persons who argue in favour of practice and experience, to condemn generally all attempts to improve agriculture by philosophical inquiries and chemical methods. That much vague speculation may be found in the works of those who have lightly taken up agricultural chemistry, it is impossible to deny. It is not uncommon to find a number of changes rung upon a string of technical terms, such as oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and azote, as if the science depended upon words rather than upon things. ”

“ His own discoveries, taken collectively, did more than those of any one of his contemporaries to uproot and destroy the only generalisation by which his immediate predecessors had sought to group and connect the phenomena of chemistry, but he was wholly unable to perceive this fact. A patient and industrious observer, absolutely truthful, and, as he hoped and believed, unbiassed and impartial, he was nevertheless entirely lacking in the higher qualities of the imagination or in that power of divination which is the characteristic of men of the type of Newton. ”

“ In the meantime came the War, with all its horrors, griefs, and anxieties—the crushed hopes for the Peace he had struggled to preserve so far as in him lay—the unending enmity and bitterness he foresaw between two nations that in his big heart he had fondly linked together as the mightiest humanizing forces of the world. ”

“ It would be impossible in the space at our disposal to attempt to give a minute analysis of Davy’s work in connection with agriculture. Its interest now is, for the most part, historical; what is of permanent importance in the way of fact has long since been woven into the common web of knowledge. Its greatest value was not in the novelty or the abundance of its facts, but rather as a closely-reasoned exposition of the relation of agriculture to science, and of the necessity for applying the principles and methods of science to the art. ”

“ The personal and individual attention of the professor is the true secret of success; it is absolutely essential that he should know, and take an interest in, the work of every man in his laboratory, whether beginning or finishing his course.... It is in the laboratory, and there alone, that chemistry can be properly learnt, and it is by the peripatetic teaching of the professor and his demonstrators that the student benefits most. Laboratory teaching must inculcate method and accuracy ”

“ Birth—Parentage—Home Life—Early Education
“If,” says Mr Frederic Harrison, “we choose one man as a type of the intellectual energy of the eighteenth century we could hardly find a better than Joseph Priestley, though his was not the greatest mind of the century. His versatility, eagerness, activity and humanity; the immense range of his curiosity in all things, physical, moral or social; his place in science, in theology, in philosophy and in politics; his peculiar relation to the Revolution, and the pathetic story of his unmerited sufferings, may make him the hero of the eighteenth century.” ”

“ To attempt, with insufficient means, to support philosophy, is merely to humiliate her and render her an object of dirision. Those who establish foundations for teaching the sciences ought, at least, to understand their dignity. To connect pecuniary speculation, or commercial advantages, with schemes for promoting the progress of knowledge, is to take crops without employing manure; is to create sterility, and to destroy improvement. A scientific institution ought no more to be made an object of profit than an hospitable, or a charitable establishment. ”

“ In the British Press, with a few dishonourable and unimportant exceptions, the same thing may truthfully be said. The working classes have never been infected by anti-Germanism. Our commercial men, who are brought into intimate trading relations with the Germans, desire an Anglo-German understanding beyond all other aspirations in the sphere of foreign policy.
To believe that England now wishes, or is likely ever to wish, to go to war with Germany is a delusion in which only the insane can indulge. What on earth, may well be asked, can England gain by commencing war with Germany? ”

“ Davy’s name, in consequence of these discoveries, will be always recorded in the annals of science amongst those of the most illustrious philosophers of his time. His country with reason will be proud of him, and it is no small honour to the Royal Institution that these great discoveries have been made within its walls; in that laboratory, and by those instruments, which from the zeal of promoting useful knowledge have, with so much propriety, been placed at the disposal and for the use of its most excellent professor of chemistry. ”

“ A broad-minded man, who thought spaciously and did things magnanimously, nature intended him to be a leader. His example was infectious, and nowhere was it more obvious than at Owens College, where the success of his own department was a constant stimulus to his colleagues. [194] Men valued his counsel because they trusted his judgment.
He knew his limitations as a man of science. He was too honest and sincere to cherish any illusions as to the position posterity would assign to him as a leader in chemical inquiry. ”

“ Of course, there were persons who said that patriotism should forbid the acceptance of the award. Davy’s own view was more sensible and politic. “Some people,” he said to his friend Poole, “say I ought not to accept this prize; and there have been foolish paragraphs in the papers to that effect; but if the two countries or governments are at war, the men of science are not. That would, indeed, be a civil war of the worst description: we should rather, through the instrumentality of men of science, soften the asperities of national hostility.” ”

“ Bunsen, indeed, used to say that one new chemical fact, even an unimportant one, accurately determined, was worth a whole congress of discussion of matters of theory. [195] The truth was Roscoe, in chemistry as in other matters, was primarily a man of action: he was essentially an “experimentarian philosopher,” as Hobbes sneeringly dubbed the whole of the Fellows of the Royal Society. A fact absolutely ascertained was a definite and permanent addition to knowledge; hypotheses and theories were transitory and mutable; they have their day and cease to be. ”

“ Novelty in itself is delightful, especially to people of rank and fortune, who at that time in consequence of the Continent being closed, and owing to the war, must have been delighted to have had opened to them a new and unexpected source of interest, fitted to amuse those who were suffering from ennui, and to instruct those who were anxious for instruction. The Royal Institution, moreover, was the creation of a large number of influential persons, both in the higher ranks of society and of science. ”

“ The Associates of the Owens College, whom it is my privilege to present to you to-day, are spontaneously linking their names and reputations with the name and fame of our University, and it seems a twice-blessed relationship which on both sides is founded on goodwill. Many of those whom I am about to lead to you are men distinguished in letters and science, and in the several learned professions and other occupations to which their lives are devoted. Some are members of the governing and teaching bodies of our own University. ”

“ They are limited in their effects, which are directed towards the immutable interests of society. They cannot be made subservient to fashion or caprice; they must forever be attached to truth, and belong to nature. If we merely consider instruction in physical science, this even requires an expensive apparatus to be efficient; for without proper ocular demonstrations, all lectures must be unavailing,—things rather than words should be made the objects of study. A certain knowledge of the beings and substances surrounding us must be felt as a want by every cultivated mind. ”

“ Of the remarkable men of science whom Davy met on these occasions he has left us some slight sketches composed during his last illness, some of which are of interest to the student who desires to know something of the men whose names are as household words in the history of chemistry. Guyton de Morveau—who played such a leading part in the political Revolution of France, as well as in the revolution of its chemistry, and who, with Fourcroy, popularised the doctrines of Lavoisier whilst bringing his head to the scaffold—was found to be a gentleman of mild and conciliatory manners. ”

“ After having given an outline of Davy’s investigations “at the particular request of the Managers,” Dr. Dibdin proceeds:—
“These may justly be placed amongst the most brilliant and valuable discoveries which have ever been made in chemistry, for a great chasm in the chemical system has been filled up; a blaze of light has been diffused over that part which before was utterly dark; and new views have been opened, so numerous and interesting, that the more any man who is versed in chemistry reflects on them, the more he finds to admire and to heighten his expectation of future important results. ”