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promoters of language, letters, arts, sciences, religion and politics.”
The Metallurgy of the Japanese does not differ much from the Chinese and has, even in the present time, a purely practical, and not the least scientific basis. Chemistry was as unknown to the old Japanese as it was to the Chinese. The latter have still the most extravagant, nay, absurd, ideas of the changes to which matter is liable. By means of a long and patient experience the practical Chinese have originally found out their different melting processes; they have digged their ores and fused their metals from the oldest time, without knowing the rudest elements of geology or chemistry. They do not differ in this respect from the old Celtic, Egyptian and other nations, and Europe, who knew in the most ancient times a rough manner of melting metals, without having the slightest scientific knowledge of it. Chemistry is the youngest of all natural sciences, and even in Europe till the middle of the 18th century (when Lavoisier, Scheele and Priestley founded the quantities period), the most extraordinary and false ideas prevailed about the changes to which matter is liable. But the western nations have largely profited by the discoveries of chemical science in ameliorating their Metallurgical processes, whilst the Chinese and Japanese have made no progress at all in this direction. Their methods are still the same as they have been for many centuries. Hence the melting of metals by these nations stands at present much behind our western methods.
Hitherto the Metallurgy of the Japanese has been deseribed by no author. The classical and doubtless the best work which at any time has been written about Japan—the Nippon Archiv of Von Siebold, was never finished and contains but very little about this subject, whilst Kaempfer’s History of Japan contains only some insignificant notices, which are often wholy erroneous.[1]
- ↑ For instance, page 81, “Antimony is wanting absolutely” (Antimony ores are very common in this country.) According to Kaempfer “lead is not in Japan,” whilst there is a profusion of lead-ore.
