Note 327 — Chapter XXII · [319]
Reading edition
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 deduction and compendious definition, the H-O-H aspect of it is the more useful one to bear in mind.