Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/644

618 of facts contained in President White's pamphlet, but with nothing of his admirable analysis and exposition of the working of this great financial experiment. Let none fail to read and ponder the document. It is a lesson in one branch of political economy that our citizens cannot afford to neglect, and we are glad to be able to state that the publishers have issued an edition for universal circulation, as a campaign document needed at this time by both parties, and at a price so low that it may be distributed everywhere.

is proposed to raise a statue in Munich in honor of the illustrious chemist Liebig. No man better deserves such a tribute, for the claims of Liebig upon the appreciation and gratitude of the civilized world are unique and unrivaled. Starting from obscurity, he made his way by the pure force of genius alone, selecting his line of study even in boyhood, when he was snubbed by his teachers for the stupidity of his choice; he gave himself to chemistry early, unreservedly, with the enthusiasm of a vehement nature, and pursued it with indefatigable industry almost to the day of his death. He became a leader in this field in early life, became the acknowledged master amid a host of powerful competitors, and died the greatest chemist in Germany. The influence exerted by Liebig in the advancement of his favorite science it is hardly possible to over-estimate. His original investigations, each of which pushed forward the branch of inquiry to which it was devoted, are numbered by hundreds, so that, as Dr. Hoffman, in his recent eulogy, justly observes, "Were we to consider merely the vast number and incalculable importance of the chemical facts which he has established, we should have to proclaim him one of the greatest contributors to chemistry at large that ever have appeared, while of organic chemistry we could not hesitate to consider him the very source and fountain-head."

Liebig was a great experimenter, but that is not his highest title to eminence as a chemist. He enriched the science by new methods of analytic research, and invented the apparatus which gave a new impulse to organic investigations and made an epoch in organic chemistry, and he vastly enriched the science by varied and extensive laboratory researches. But it was not merely by these inquiries that he made the deepest impression upon the mind of the age. He was not only an experimenter, but a thinker; not only a chemist, but a philosopher; and it was in his grasp of principles and the establishment of general laws that we recognize his highest genius. Chemical analysis, the revision and correction of old processes, and the elucidation of new facts, are of course important and meritorious things, and in this field men of moderate ability may make valuable and permanent contributions to the progress of science. But it requires the insight of a higher genius to pierce through the multitudinous mass of isolated results, and bring out the principles that reduce them to order and bring them into living correlation with the general organism of scientific truth. This was the distinguishing character of Liebig's work in the chemical field. When he began his labors, physiological chemistry had hardly a foothold of recognition. The vital force was supreme in the realm of life, and was held to suspend and override all chemical and physical agencies. Liebig made a revolution by showing that a true physiological science can only be established by interpreting vital processes in the light of chemical and physical principles.

But the scientific fame of Liebig has a yet broader basis. He is the father of agricultural chemistry. Not only did he contribute largely to the