Note 46 — Chapter XXII · REASONING.

Readers brought up on Popular Science may think that the molecular structure of things is their real essence in an absolute sense, and that water is H-O-H more deeply and truly than it is a solvent of sugar or a slaker of thirst. Not a whit! It is all of these things with equal reality, and the only reason why for the chemist it is H-O-H primarily, and only secondarily the other things, is that for his purpose of laboratory analysis and synthesis, and inclusion in the science which treats of compositions and decompositions, the H-O-H aspect of it is the more important one to bear in mind.