I shall therefore select three periods in the progress of this science, and try to give an account of the main work done in each of these. And the periods will be:--
I. The period wherein, chiefly by the work of Black, Priestley and Lavoisier, the aim of chemical science was defined and the essential characters of the phenomena to be studied were clearly stated.
II. The period during which, chiefly by the labours of Dalton, Berzelius and Davy, the great central propositions of the science were laid down and were developed into a definite theory. As belonging in great extent to this period, although chronologically later, I shall also consider the work of Graham.
III. The period when, chiefly owing to advances made in organic chemistry, broader and more far-reaching systems of classification were introduced, and the propositions laid down in the preceding period were modified and strengthened. The workers in this period were very numerous; I shall chiefly consider these two--Liebig and Dumas.
I shall conclude with a brief sketch of some of the important advances of chemical science in more recent times, and a summary of the characteristics of each of the three periods.
Early chemistry was not a science. The ancient chemists dealt chiefly with what we should now call chemical manufactures; they made glass, cleaned leather, dyed cloth purple and other colours, extracted metals from their ores, and made alloys of metals. No well-founded explanations of these processes could be expected either from men who simply used the recipes of their predecessors, or from philosophers who studied natural science, not by the help of accurate experiments, but by the unaided light of their own minds.
At somewhat later times chemistry assumed a very important place in the general schemes propounded by philosophers.
Change is vividly impressed on all man's surroundings: the endeavour to find some resting-place amidst the chaos of circumstances, some unchanging substance beneath the ever-changing appearances of things, has always held a prominent place with those who study the phenomena of the world which surrounds them. In the third and fourth centuries of our era much attention was given to the art which professed to explain the changes of Nature. Religion, philosophy, and what we should now call natural science, were at that time closely intermingled; the scheme of things which then, and for several centuries after that time, exerted a powerful influence over the minds of many thinkers was largely based on the conception of a fundamental unity underlying and regulating the observed dissimilarities of the universe.