AND ITS SELF-CONSEBVATION. 91 



space-filling substance, where, as we have previously 

 intimated, it is the true ether. Such would seem to be 

 the legitimate inference. And in any case it is evident 

 that where the separative tendency as yet greatly over- 

 balances the tendency toward concentration, the number 

 and complexity of chemical compounds must be corre- 

 spondingly limited. So that in the sun, for example, with 

 its enormously high temperature that is, with the still 

 existing relatively intense repulsion or strain toward sep- 

 aration the number of chemical compounds must be 

 exceedingly few and those compounds must be of the 

 simplest character. More explicitly, it is impossible that 

 oxygen and hydrogen should there realize their combi- 

 native tendency in the actual formation of water, even in 

 the vaporous state, while not a single one of the whole 

 series of known carbon compounds can possibly exist 

 otherwise than in the purely potential state. 



It is to be noted further that the whole of modern 

 chemistry is built up from the precise quantitative rela- 

 tions existing between the " elements. " So that on this 

 side chemistry is simply one form of applied mathematics. 

 As M. Berthelot declares in closing his remarkable work, 

 " Essai de Mecanique CMmique," chemistry "approaches 

 more and more nearly to that ideal conception, followed 

 out for so many years by the efforts of scholars and of 

 philosophers, in which all speculations and all discoveries 

 tend to establish (concourent vers) the unity of the uni- 

 versal law of natural movements and forces." That is, 

 chemistry is coming more and more to be regarded as 

 simply a branch of mechanics in the general sense of the 

 term in proportion as chemical phenomena are found to 

 be capable of mathematical treatment. At the same time 



