Chemistry for beginners

[Part I]
Page
Introductory	[6]
Alchemy	[7]
Modern Chemistry	[8]
Mediæval Chemistry	[10]
John Dalton	[13]
The Atomic Theory	[14]
The Elements	[15]
Atomic Weights	[16]
Valency	[17]
The Periodic Law	[18]
Earlier Discoveries	[20]
Analysis and Synthesis	[21]
Formulæ and Equations	[22]
Organic vs. Inorganic Chemistry	[23]
Organic Compounds	[25]
Catalysis	[26]
Enzymes	[27]
Hormones	[27]
Chemistry of the Earth	[28]
The Spectroscope	[29]
Astro-Physics and Chemistry	[31]
Spectrum Analysis	[31]
Industrial Chemistry	[33]
Instruments of Research	[36]
Salinity of the Oceans	[37]
The Newer Chemistry	[38]
Radio-Activity	[39]
Intra-Atomic Energy	[39]
The Electrical Theory of Matter	[40]
Within the Atom	[42]
Electrons	[43]
The Nature of Matter	[44]
[Part II]
The Elements	[46]
Radio-Activity	[49]
The Origin of Life	[51]
Creation of Life	[52]
The Ether	[53]
Chemistry and Metaphysics	[55]

PART I

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.

It was only natural that, prior to the discovery of the laws of the indestructibility of matter and energy, that this sense of “change” should have struck these early thinkers very forcibly, since they had no means of ascertaining that, when matter disappears from our sight, it is not actually destroyed. We now know that, when we burn a candle, the candle disappears, but that the elements composing the candle are merely changed into invisible gaseous compounds, which are no longer visible to the human eye. Lacking delicate instruments of precision, the ancients could not know this; to them, the matter of the candle would have disappeared. Hence, it was only natural that they should seek the ultimate reality behind these changes, and speculate as to its origin and nature.

ALCHEMY

The modern science of chemistry is relatively new. It gradually emerged from alchemy, which practically constituted the chemistry of the middle ages. The objects of alchemy were various: (1) the transmutation of the base metals into gold, by means of the so-called “Philosopher’s Stone”; (2) The fixation of Mercury; (3) The discovery of the elixir of Life, etc. These were the purely chemical aspects of alchemy, but we now know that the alchemists had much more than this in mind, in their experimental work, and that they hinted at their true meaning in many of their veiled writings. Many of the higher types of alchemists were also mystics, and when they wrote in chemical symbols, they really concealed their inner meaning; they referred, very largely, to the inner spirit of man, and the methods by which this could be changed or transformed into some higher spiritual being. (See “Alchemy Ancient and Modern,” by H. Stanley Redgrove; “Alchemy, Its Scope and Romance,” by the Rev. J. E. Mercer, etc.) Mr. Foster Damon has lately published a series of articles in which he has brought forward a mass of evidence tending to prove that the alchemists were also deep students of psychic phenomena, and that their experiments relative to the “First Matter” were really experiments in so-called “Materialization!” He has published his findings in a series of articles in the “Occult Review.”

MODERN CHEMISTRY

Modern chemistry may be said to begin with Robert Boyle (1626–1691). He defined an element as a substance which could not be decomposed, but which could enter into combination with other elements, giving compounds capable of decomposition into these original elements. The number of elements which were thought to exist varied greatly,—some contending that they were but few in number, others that they were numerous. It must be remembered that all this was before the time of Dalton, and that the atomic theory had not yet been advanced as a scientific hypothesis, since the days of the ancient Greeks, when Democritus and Epicurus had defended this view. The swing of science, at that time was, therefore, toward the materialism of those older writers, and the atomic theories which they had then proposed.