Chemistry for beginners

LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 679
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
Hereward Carrington, Ph.D.
Author of the following Little Blue Books: No. 491, “Psychology for Beginners;” No. 419, “Life: Its Origin and Nature;” No. 524, “Death and Its Problems;” No. 493, “New Discoveries in Science;” Nos. 445–446, “Psychical Research” (2 vols.), etc., etc.
HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY GIRARD, KANSAS
Copyright, 1924 Haldeman-Julius Company
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
The ancient Greeks, when they looked about them on the world in which they lived, came to the definite conclusion that everything is in a constant state of flux, or change. Things animate and inanimate gradually disintegrated and tended either to disappear (apparently) or to change into other forms of matter. With their true æsthetic sense, they felt it necessary that there should be some one permanent thing in the world, underlying all the changes which they saw going on about them, and many of their early speculations were devoted to the nature and constitution of this one “permanent thing.” Thales, of Myletus, who flourished about 585 B. C., and who was, perhaps, the first great philosopher and physicist, contended that the essential principle of things,—the substance, or stuff, of all things,—must be water . He held the view that, by condensation and rarefaction of water all things rise, and he actually attempted an evolutionary account of the Genesis of Man, Plants and Animals, with this idea as a basis for his thought.
Anaximenes said that air , or ether , must be the substance of things. Heraclitus regarded fire as the most primary element in the universe,—from which all else arises. Anaximander said that the “unlimited”—a sort of boundless, animated mass—is the ultimate substance. Plato, as we know, contended that the permanent reality of things was not anything material at all, but was mind, or spirit . Empedocles, (495–435 B. C.) advanced the theory that there are four elements—Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Anaxagoras contended that nothing changed of itself, but that it is caused or made to change, and that that which produces these changes is the permanent reality. This he believed to be a sort of mind or universal intelligence ( Nous ), but he regarded this mind as strictly impersonal, as well as immaterial, and did not attempt to answer the difficulty as to how mind can affect matter in any detailed manner.