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177
The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry
·
M. M. Pattison Muir
114
Although
Stahl
and
his
followers
were
emerging
from
the
trammels
of
alchemy,
they
were
still
bound
by
many
of
the
conceptions
of
that
scheme
of
nature.
We
have
learned,
in
previous
chapters,
that
the
central
idea
of
alchemy
was
expressed
in
the
saying:
"Matter
must
be
deprived
of
its
properties
in
order
to
draw
out
its
soul."
The
properties
of
substances
are
everything
to
the
modern
chemist--indeed,
such
words
as
iron,
copper,
water,
and
gold
are
to
him
merely
convenient
expressions
for
certain
definable
groups
of
properties--but
the
phlogisteans
regarded
the
properties
of
things,
including
mass,
as
of
secondary
importance;
they
were
still
trying
to
get
beneath
the
properties
of
a
thing,
to
its
hypothetical
essence,
or
substance.
Looking
back,
we
cannot
think
of
phlogiston
as
a
substance,
or
as
a
thing,
in
the
modern
meanings
of
these
terms
as
they
are
used
in
natural
science.
Nowadays
we
think,
we
are
obliged
to
think,
of
the
sum
of
the
quantities
of
all
the
things
in
the
universe
as
unchanging,
and
unchangeable
by
any
agency
whereof
we
have
definite
knowledge.
The
meaning
we
give
to
the
word
thing
rests
upon
the
acceptance
of
this
hypothesis.
But
the
terms
substance,
thing,
properties
were
used
very
vaguely
a
couple
of
centuries
ago;
and
it
would
be
truly
absurd
to
carry
back
to
that
time
the
meanings
which
we
give
to
these
terms
to-day,
and
then
to
brand
as
ridiculous
the
attempts
of
the
men
who
studied,
then,
the
same
problems
which
we
study
now,
to
express
the
results
of
their
study
in
generalisations
which
employed
the
terms
in
question,
in
what
seems
to
us
a
loose,
vague,
and
inexact
manner.
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