ORGANIC CHEMISTRY. O 



proportion of ingredients, and of great diversity 

 in the modes of their combination. So great 

 is the complexity of these arrangements, that 

 although chemistry is fully competent to the 

 analysis of organized substances into their ulti- 

 mate elements, no human art is adequate to 

 effect their reunion in the same state as that in 

 which they had existed in those substances ; for 

 it was by the refined operations of vitality, the 

 only power which could produce this adjustment, 

 that they have been brought into that condition. 

 We may take as an example one of the simplest 

 of organic products, namely Sugar ; a substance 

 which has been analysed with the greatest accu- 

 racy by modern chemists : yet to reproduce this 

 sugar, by the artificial combination of its simple 

 elements, is a problem which has hitherto baffled 

 all the efforts of philosophy. Chemistry, not- 

 withstanding the proud rank it justly holds among 

 the physical sciences, and the noble discoveries 

 with which it has enriched the arts; notwith- 

 standing it has unveiled to us many of the secret 

 operations of nature, and placed in our hands 

 some of her most powerful instruments for acting 

 upon matter; and notwithstanding it is armed 

 with full powers to destroy, cannot, in any one 

 organic product, rejoin that which has been once 

 dissevered. Through the medium of chemistry 

 we are enabled, perhaps, to form some estimate 

 of the value of what we find executed by other 



