SKETCH OF CHARLES ADO LP HE WURTZ. 117 



the profundity of the plan of the universe. Then we enter on another 

 domain which the human spirit will be always impelled to enter and 

 explore. It is thus, and you can not change it. It is in vain that Sci- 

 ence has revealed to it the structure of the world and the order of all 

 the phenomena ; it wishes to mount higher, and in the conviction that 

 things have not in themselves their own reason for existing, their sup- 

 port, and their origin, it is led to subject them to a first cause unique, 

 universal God." 



In 18T8 Professor Wurtz delivered the Faraday Lecture of the 

 English Chemical Society, taking for his subject " The Constitution of 

 Matter in the Gaseous State." In this lecture he gave a clear exposi- 

 tion of the kinetic theory of gases, which postulates them as " com- 

 posed of small particles moving freely in space with immense veloci- 

 ties, and capable of communicating their motion by collision or friction," 

 and suggested that it had " shed a sudden clearness, an unexpected 

 light, on matters which seemed to be veiled in the deepest obscurity," 

 and added that the labors by which this theory had been worked out 

 "mark a resting-place in our course, and are, perhaps, an approach 

 toward the eternal problem of the constitution of matter a problem 

 which dates from the earliest ages of civilization, and, though dis- 

 cussed by all the great thinkers of ancient as well as of modern times, 

 still remains unsolved. May we not hope that in our own time this 

 problem has been more clearly stated and more earnestly attacked, 

 and that the labors of the nineteenth century have advanced the hu- 

 man mind in these arduous paths more than those of a Lucretius, and 

 even of a Descartes and a Newton ? From this point of view the dis- 

 coveries of modern chemistry, so well expressed and summarized by 

 the immortal conception of Dalton, will mark an epoch in the progress 

 of the human mind." 



In the same year Professor Wurtz, having been charged by the 

 French Minister of Public Instruction to make inquiry into the organi- 

 zation of the laboratories and the practical instruction given in the 

 several univei'sities of Germany and Austi'o-Hungary, made a num- 

 ber of journeys to the great seats of learning in those countries. In 

 his report he insisted strongly on the danger of creating large estab- 

 lishments, where students are taught something of everything, and on 

 the necessity of creating special foci for every large section of experi- 

 mental science. He showed the advantage of special institutes, and 

 insisted upon the organization of chemical, physical, physiological, 

 anatomical, and pathological institutions, such as flourish on the other 

 side of the Rhine. 



A second report on this series of observations has been published 

 within the present year. It contains descriptions of the great scien- 

 tific establishments of Berlin, Buda-Pest, Gratz, Leipsic, and Munich, 

 and is confined to a simple account of what the author observed in the 

 institutions described ; for, he says, " an unmeasured and uncritical 



