172 MEMOIR OF OERSTED. 



publications on science and philosophy. Among his memoirs on physics should 

 be particularly cited one on the trough-battery, executed in conjunction with his 

 friend, Professor Esmarch. Another work, entitled Principles of the New Chem- 

 istry, which appeared at Copenhagen in 1820, had been composed for the auditors 

 of his course, with a view to placing within their reach the doctrines taught in 

 his numerous writings on chemistry and electricity, and particularly in his Views 

 of the chemical laws of nature. First printed at Berlin, as I have said, this 

 exposition of his favorite ideas had been translated into French by M. Marcel 

 de Serres, and published at Paris, in 1813, with the concurrence of its author 

 and that of our distinguished colleague, M. Chevreul, under the title of Researches 

 on the identity of chemical and electric forces, a title which clearly defined its 

 object. 



This learned and ingenious work, dedicated to the author of the Statique 

 Chimique, our illustrious Berthollet, was in truth the principal fruit of the labors 

 and meditations of Oersted from his earliest youth. A citation of some passages 

 of this admirable book will suffice to give an idea of the profound and original 

 views which had presided over its composition : ^'* * * * The chemical 

 part of the natural sciences," says Oersted, "is far from having attained the 

 perfection which their mechanical part has reached, and cannot, like the latter' 

 deduce from a small number of principles, alreadj^ connected with one another, 

 all the other principles ; but it has been obliged to seek each particular propo- 

 sition, each particular law, by means of experiments undertaken solely with that 

 particular view. Now the greater part of these laws have hitherto so little 

 enabled us to see the bonds which unite them, that it was necessary to be con- 

 vinced, by general considerations, of the unity which exists in all the works of 

 nature, in order not to be deceived as regards that unity. 



" The actual state, in 1813, of the chemical part of the natural sciences might 

 be compared to that of their mechanical part before Galileo, Descartes, Huyghens, 

 and Newton had taught us to reduce the more compound movements to their 

 most simple principles. Before these illustrious physicists, it is true, a great num- 

 ber of important facts were known, even some remarkable series of facts, but 

 that great principle of unity to which science owes its present high degree of 

 perfection had not yet been arrived at. * * * * " 



Oersted saw this great principle of unity in the uniformity of the general laws 

 of mechanics, and he found an example of the duality, which also he every- 

 where sought, in the two forces which concur in producing circular or curvilinear 

 motion. To find examples of the confusion which had preceded the discovery 

 of these forces, it is sutiicient, he said, " to read what w^as written on the classifi- 

 cation of motions by the celebrated Bacon, who, although a cotemporary of 

 Galileo, still speaks of a violent and natural motion, and of so many other kinds 

 of motions, which he knew no better how to reduce to a single principle than do 

 the chemists at the present time know how to reduce the affinities of the alkalies, 

 acids, earths, oxides, combustible bodies, and oxygen to one identical primitive 

 action. * * * * 



"By referring all motions to their fundamental laws, the mechanical part of 

 the natural sciences," adds Oersted, " has been raised to that present degree of per- 

 fection which embraces all the movements of the universe as one great mechanical 

 problem, whose solution enables us to calculate in advance an infinitude of par- 

 ticular phenomena. In order to prepare the chemical part of the natural sciences 

 for a like perfection, we must endeavor to reduce all chemical actions to the 

 primitive forces which produce them ; we shall then also be in a position to 

 calculate all the chemical properties of the primitive forces and their laws. Thus, 

 chemistry being only occupied with these properties, this whole science will bo 

 converted into a theory of forces, to which mathematics maj'^ be applied, and it 

 will thereby acquire perhaps new capacities, like those which have been derived 

 from the application of mathematics to movement. 



