Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/132

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
120
Aromatics and the Soul

give here, plainly show the difference between them :

H−C≡N (hydrocyanic acid) and

A chemical formula with carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen




(nitrobenzol).

(T. H. Fairbrother, to whom I am indebted for much information on the chemistry of olfaction, would dispose of this criticism of Heyninx’s by denying that the odours of those two substances are identical. See later, p. 132.)

Chemistry, then, having, according to the critics, failed us, we turn to the allied science of physics. Physics deals with matter in its ultimate state, beginning, so to speak, where chemistry, with its work of changes and combinations, ceases, and taking us deep into the heart of matter independent of its chemical properties and behaviour.

We have seen that, chemically speaking, elements and their compounds exist as molecules made up of atoms, Now molecules may be minute, and atoms even more minute, but in “electrons,” the name given to the last divisible