The servant-girl has no need of
chemistry to teach her, that, when the match is applied, the fire will
burn and smoke ascend the chimney; but she is far from being able to
predict the proportional weights of oxygen and carbon which will unite,
the volume of the gases which are to be given off, or the intensity of
the radiation which is to warm the room: her prevision is qualitative,
not quantitative, in its character. But when Galileo discovers the
increment of the velocity of falling bodies, and when Dalton and De
Morveau discover the exact proportions in which chemical union takes
place, it is evident that knowledge has advanced from a rudely
qualitative to an accurately quantitative stage; and it does not admit
of dispute that the progress of science is thus a progress from the
indefinite to the definite.
From the point of view here taken it would appear that during the
present century no science has made such rapid and unprecedented strides
as Chemistry; and its progress becomes all the more striking, when we
consider the state of the science previous to the French Revolution.
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