The Tendencies of Chemistry 



The direction which Deville imparted to 

 chemical research has proved every day more 

 fruitful. During some twenty years the French 

 school, which had shown the road, distinguished 

 itself by its industry and zeal. Berthelot 

 himself, before being attracted to the thermo- 

 chemical researches, which he thought more 

 fruitful, had made his contributions to the new 

 ideas regarding states of chemical equilibrium 

 by pointing out the part played by them in the 

 formation of ethers by the action of acids on 

 alcohols. Then little by little this flame of 

 enthusiasm died down in France to be rekindled 

 elsewhere, chiefly in Holland, Germany and 

 America, by the labours of Van t'Hoff, Horts- 

 mann and Gibbs. 



The causes of this transference of scientific 

 interest are fortunately only too clear. The 

 great French chemists of the end of the nine- 

 teenth century were too exclusively chemists; 

 they placed too much confidence in the reliability 

 of their methods, and the memory of the 

 lucubrations of the alchemists made them dis- 

 trust the abstractions and generalisations of 

 mathematical physics. Thus, after having set 

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