62 



general adoption of the dynamic view of the world and of our 

 own ideas and activities. The adoption of that point of view 

 may be obtained in any subject; it cannot well be missed in 

 biology. 



2. The Relation of Pure and Applied Chemistry. 

 Julius Stieglitz. 

 One may consider applied chemistry to be chemistry applied 

 to further utilitarian ends in manufacturing, commerce, agricul- 

 ture, mining, medicine, and similar fields ; pure chemistry as 

 chemistry devoted to the discovery and spreading of truth ir- 

 respective of any question of commercial profit in it. The 

 contrast, we note, is in the conscious aim and purpose of the 

 chemist, a contrast, to use a trite parallel, akin to the common 

 distinction made between murder and manslaughter, which dif- 

 fer, I believe, only in the intent of the slayer. But the net 

 result of the act, oiie must remember, is the same in both cases. 

 In the same way, it may be said if one considers pure and ap- 

 plied chemistry in their highest forms of development — and 1 

 wish to use the very short time at my disposal for the teatment 

 of the large question before us from this single point of view — 

 it would be extremely difficult in most cases to distiguish positi- 

 vely and justly wherein the result of so-called pure chemistry dif- 

 fers from the net result of so-called applied chemistry in their re- 

 lations to the progress of knowledge and to practical aflfairs. It 

 would be a most hazardous undertaking to predict what discover- 

 ies of pure chemistry will or will not sooner or later have effects 

 which may be even revolutionary in their consequences in the 

 field of commercial applications. It is not overstating the case to 

 say that such revolutionary consequences have already followed in 

 almost every branch of modern industry since the enunciation, 

 some twenty years ago, of van't Hoff's theory of solution and 

 as the result of the vast development of physico-chemical theory 

 that has grown out of it. To give but a single, small, but sig- 

 nificant instance, chosen because it is taken from the field of 

 every-day occurrences, railway accidents, which one would sus- 

 pect to have only the remotest connection with pure chemis- 



