THE FUTURE OF CHEMISTRY. 277 



with a certain odor, color, melting-point, and crystalline form ; and 

 there the description ends. No thought of ascertaining its other 

 physical properties ever seems to enter the head of the discoverer. 

 Doubtless all this work has a value ; some of it has already led to re- 

 sults of great importance ; still it is not in any such direction that 

 chemistry is to look for its chief future growth. The same amount 

 of effort, otherwise expended, would yield much richer returns. Un- 

 fortunately, an inferior line of research has become fashionable, and 

 scientific investigators, like all other people, are more or less subject 

 to fashion. It must be plain to every one, however, that the work of 

 chemistry amounts to a good deal more than merely to obtain, formu- 

 late, and classify new compounds. It is necessary to study not only 

 the bodies themselves, but also the laws involved in their formation 

 and decay. We should seek to understand what physical forces are 

 operative in each reaction, and in what quantities. No chemical 

 change can occur unattended by the phenomena of either heat, light, 

 or electricity. To-day, little is done save to investigate the results of 

 chemical reactions. Surely the phenomena of the reactions them- 

 selves ought to be studied a little more. Chemistry would not lose 

 much were no new compounds to be described for ten years to come, 

 if chemists might only be induced to examine more closely the sub- 

 stances already known. 



These few words of well-meant criticism may very properly lead 

 us to the main subject of this paper : What is the future of chemis- 

 try ? In what direction must the science look for its grandest devel- 

 opment ? What grand generalizations may we expect, and what steps 

 should be taken to lead up to them ? As the past is always prophetic 

 of the future, it is evident that we must pay some attention to the 

 former growth of chemistry before we can safely predict what is to 

 come. If we would be thorough, we ought to do even more, and ex- 

 tend our view across the limits of this particular science into the fields 

 of other sciences closely connected with it. For present purposes, 

 however, we need consider, in conjunction with chemistry, only its 

 twin-sister, physics. The two sciences are so closely intertwined that 

 neither can be studied alone. Progress in either, in the long-run, 

 means progress in both. Upon the border-land between the two our 

 attention must be fixed. 



Upon studying the history of chemistry, we cannot but be struck 

 by the changes which have occurred both in the form and in the sig- 

 nificance of chemical notation. There we have to deal with a sym- 

 bolism so peculiar that it represents in its modern form several very 

 important stages of scientific growth. Every great change in chemi- 

 cal thought is mirrored by some modification in this symbolic system. 

 At first a formula represented the composition by weight of a sub- 

 stance, and embodied certain theoretical conceptions with which we 

 have, for present purposes, nothing to do. Soon an extension of our 



