MEMOIR OF OERSTED. 173 



" The discoveries wliicli have been made since tlie commencement of tliis 

 century may so far contribute to advance chemistry towards this state of perfec- 

 tion that I have thoui^ht it would be useful" (it is still Oersted who speaks) "to 

 collect here the scattered materials, in order to attempt the formation of a system. 

 A iirst attempt of this kind can, doubtless, be but imperfect ; but it must at last 

 be necessary to take this first step, and I have judged it proper not to defer 

 taking it, * * * * for the investigator of nature will make no great dis- 

 covery except in so far as he shall have a certain idea which leads him to pro- 

 pound, so to say, his questions to nature, as well as a determinate scope for his 

 observations. The object, therefore, of the system which we here present is 

 chiefly to draw attention to certain important problems, and to sei've as prelimi- 

 nary to other more perfect systems which the rapid progress of science will not 

 fail soon to call forth. It is only by the united etforts of a great number of 

 savants, and after some generations, that chemical science can attain that degree 

 of perfection which, with perhaps too much boldness, we have ventured to antici- ' 

 pate. 



" It wnll not be useless, at our first step in this undertaking, to cast a glance 

 over the space which A\t5 shall have to traverse. We shall commence our 

 researches by a general classification of all the inorganic bodies according to 

 their chemical nature. We shall then present some considerations on the chem- 

 ical actions best known, in order to prove that all the chemical phenomena which 

 have been studied up to this time may be attributed to two forces difi'used through 

 all nature. We shall show that these forces act not only in the immediate con- 

 tact between two bodies, but that they can also be transmitted, by some medium, 

 from one to the other. This will lead us to discover, independently of electrical 

 considerations, the chemical action which we have recognized in galvanism. By 

 means of these successive approaches we shall be able finally to present the 

 cheuiical forces in the state in which they are most free, and to render evident, 

 at the same time, the identity of those forces with electrical forces."* 



I should have abridged this long passage still more than I have done, had I 

 not desired that it should be comprehended to what extent, according to Oersted, 

 is to be found in the general imiformity of the laws of chemical com})osition that 

 great principle of unity which, agreeably to his philosophical conceptions, exists 

 in all nature, and, at the same time, the duality which he also sought there in 

 the two electricities, positive and negative. '' Finally," Oersted continues, '■'■ we 

 shall endeavor, in order still better to prove the universalit}' of the two chemical 

 or electrical forces, to show that they also produce the magnetic phenomena and 

 the principal changes in organic nature." t These lines already contained, so to 

 say, the programme of the great discovery which he was on the point of making. 



In this work, as in his earlier essays of 1799, Oersted })laced aluminium in the 

 rear of the alkaline earths, \ as less alkaline than all these latter, and indeed 

 almost an acid. After aluminium came silicium, more acid than alkaline j while 

 glass, he said, might be considered as a salt.§ It will be admitted that from 

 thence to the theory of the silicates there was but a step ; this new advance was 

 achieved some time afterwards by Hniithsou Tennant ; but, as every one knows, 

 it was Berzelius, beyond all others, who developed the theory of the silicates. 



The work of Oersted, which the limits prescribed to this notice do not permit 

 me comidetely to analyze, contains a multiplicity of views; all equally marked 

 by justness of thought, and more than one of which ofierseven at this day some- 

 thing of the ])i(piancy of novelty. 



In another passage, seeking to find among authors already become anti(pie — 

 such as Winterl, Ritter, &c. — tlie first rudiments of the ideas Avhich occupied 

 him, and which it was the object of his book to develop. Oersted added : *' The 



* See Rtcherchcs sur l'idcntil6 des forces clumiques et ikctriijues, p. 2. 



t Ibid , p. t). t Ibid., p. .07. ^ Ibid., p. fiO. 



