301 HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY. 



are living, and it must be the task of future historians to trace its 

 course. 



We may, however, say a word on the reception which the theory 

 met with, in the forms which it assumed, anterior to the labors of 

 Faraday. Even before the great discovery of Davy, Grotthuss, in 

 1805, had written upon the theory of electro-chemical decomposition; 

 but he and, as we have seen, Davy, and afterwards other writers, as 

 Riffault and Chompre, in 1807, referred the effects to the poles. 44 

 But the most important attempt to appropriate and employ the 

 generalization which these discoveries suggested, was that of Berzelius; 

 who adopted at once the view of the identity, or at least the universa. 

 connexion, of electrical relations with chemical affinity. He con- 

 sidered, 46 that in all chemical combinations the elements may be con- 

 sidered as electro-positive and electro-negative ; and made this oppo- 

 sition the basis of his chemical doctrines ; in which he was followed 

 by a large body of the chemists of Germany. He held too that the 

 heat and light, evolved during cases of powerful combination, are the 

 consequence of the electric discharge which is at that moment taking 

 place : a conjecture which Faraday at first spoke of with praise. 46 

 But at a later period he more sagely says, 4T that the flame which is 

 produced in such cases exhibits but a small portion of the electric 

 power which really acts. " These therefore may not, cannot, be taken 

 as evidences of the nature of the action ; but are merely incidental 

 results, incomparably small in relation to the forces concerned, and 

 supplying no information of the way in which the particles are active 

 on each other, or in which their forces are finally arranged." And 

 comparing the evidence which lie himself had given of the principle 

 on which Berzelius's speculations rested, with the speculations them- 

 selves, Faraday justly conceived, that he had transferred the doctrine 

 from the domain of what he calls doubtful knoivledye, to that of induc- 

 tive certainty. 



Now that we are arrived at the starting-place, from which this well- 

 proved truth, the identity of electric and chemical forces, must make 

 its future advances, it would be trifling to dwell longer on the details 

 of the diffusion of that doubtful knowledge which preceded this more 

 certain science. Our history of chemistry is, therefore, here at an end. 

 I have, as far as I could, executed my task ; which was, to mark all the 



44 Faraday (Researches, jVri fp 1 492). 45 Ann. Chim. Ixxxvi. 146, for 1S13. 

 46 Researches, Art. 870. 4T 960. 



