362 THE CHEMICAL PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY. 



of production which have been characterized by an eminent technolo- 

 gist as "the gaining of gold from rubbish" — all this seems trifling to 

 the mind that looks down from its standpointof mathematical mechan- 

 ics when compared with the work of a ])romised Newton of chemistry, 

 who some day will represent chemical reactions in the thought and in 

 the language of mathematical physics. 



And if he who looks from a height is justified in the expression that 

 to-day chemistry, in the recognition of ultimate causes, stands yet 

 below astronomy of the time of Kepler and Copernicus, must not the 

 chemist lose courage if he attempts, before an ilhistrious assemblage, 

 to raise a song of praise to his science, to glorify what she has done 

 and what in the future she seems chosen to do? If in spite of this 

 the attempt be made, it must be with that resignation which rests upon 

 the belief that " we should consider everything, but aim only at that 

 which is possible." 



Though we share, with full conviction, the expectations of a New- 

 tonian period in chemistry, we hardly venture to hope that that period 

 is near, and even the most enlightened representatives of the newer 

 physical chemistry seem but precursors of that distant era. 



Perhaps the chemist, immersed in the daily work of his science, fails 

 to take the comprehensive view of one who from a distant height looks 

 down upon the same. But those who are surrounded by the whirl of 

 hourly renewed work recognize all the more clearly the immense 

 amount that remains still to be achieved before those distant aims can 

 be realized. This epoch, so rich in pathfinders in the department of 

 physics, has rarely directed the highest order of research into the ter- 

 ritory of our science, and especially have the more complicated chem- 

 ical phenomena been avoided. 



If in a period that has witnessed the discoveries of Helmholtz,Kobert 

 Mayer, Joule, Clausius, and van't Hoft", the revolutionizing progress of 

 knowledge has been limited to physics, and if only modest applications 

 of what was gained have been made in related studies, then the epoch 

 seems not yet to be at hand in which chemical processes can be thought 

 of as we think of the movements which we feel as sound, light, or heat. 



A humiliating statement ! But, strange to say, the chemist of to-day 

 has hardly time to complain of this resignation imposed upon him, and 

 this for reasons easily understood. 



If without question it is the aim of all natural science to under- 

 stand phenomena so fully that they may be described in a mathematical 

 form, and, as far as they are unknown, may be predicted, a science 

 which is so far distant from this aim as to look merely fov the path that 

 shall some day lead to it, must be considered as in its infancy. In 

 the present stage our way of thinking and acting has this peculiarity. 

 In every science imagination must stand as another ])ower alongside of 

 knowledge and reasoning. But the influence of imagination upon knowl- 

 edge is all the greater the further this latter is distant from the men- 



