THE ATOMIC VIEW OF NATURE. 



413 



middle of the century.^ It thus happened that a variety 21. 



Uncertainty 



of circumstances combined to bring into prominence, and m chemical 



^ * theory about 



subsequently into general acceptance, the modern view of of'^ti^'cei! 



tury. 



industry in Germany was brought 

 about ; a creation almost as charac- 

 teristic of German intellect, and 

 probably more lastingly beneficial, 

 than the political changes which 

 mark the same period in history. 

 More important for a history of 

 Thought is it to note how Kolbe 

 attached himself to the school of 

 Wohler and Berzelius, and tried to 

 preserve the continuity of thought 

 in developing the fruitful ideas con- 

 tained in the writings of the latter. 

 " He united the conclusions from 

 his own researches with the declin- 

 ing theory of Berzelius ; he endued 

 the latter with new life by throw- 

 ing aside whatever of it was dead, 

 and replacing this by vigorous 

 principles. From his own and other 

 investigations he came to the con- 

 clusion that the unalterability of 

 radicles, as taught by Berzelius, 

 could no longer be maintained, since 

 the facts of substitution had to be 

 taken into account." He especially 

 developed Berzelius's idea of paired 

 compounds. (See E. v. Meyer's 

 'History of Chemistry,' p. 295.) 

 Kolbe's joint work with Frankland 

 was of the greatest importance to 

 science. The influence of Kolbe 

 was also largely of a polemical 

 nature, inasmuch as he and some 

 others, notably F. Mohr (whose 

 name will have to be mentioned in 

 a later chapter), protested energeti- 

 cally against the formal character 

 of much of the writings and work 

 produced by the French school 

 which opposed the views of Ber- 

 zelius. This school, of which 

 Dumas, Laurent, and Gerhardt 

 were the founders, and which 

 exerted a very marked and beneficial 

 influence through the teaching and 

 the finished literary productions of 



Wurtz (1817-84), was closely allied 

 with the school of Kekule in Ger- 

 many, who indeed began by logi- 

 cally developing Gerhardt's ideas, 

 being afterwards led to special views 

 and methods of his own, through 

 which he became the real founder 

 of the so-called structural formulae, \ 

 and of the doctrine of the linking 

 of atoms. I must here especially 

 record my indebtedness to the ad- 

 mirable historical essays of Wurtz 

 ('Theorie atomique,' T""* ed., 1893, 

 and ' History of Chemical Theory,' 

 transl. by Watts). For clearness 

 and elegance of style, they are 

 quite as marked as are Kopp's 

 historical works for breadth, im- 

 partiality, and philosophical in- 

 sight. 



^ The adherents of the theory of 

 substitution and types, sometimes 

 called the "modern," also the 

 " French," school, urged against 

 the followers of Berzelius, which 

 adhered to the "electro-chemical" 

 or "radicle" view, that since an 

 electro - positive element could be 

 replaced by a contrary one, there 

 was no sense in upholding the 

 polar difference. They pointed out 

 that organic substances M'ere not 

 electrolytic ; and they criticised the 

 artificial invention and multiplica- 

 tion of new radicles which had no 

 real existence, as arbitrary. On 

 the other side, the followers of 

 Berzelius objected to the entire 

 ignoring by the new school of 

 the really existing electro-chemi- 

 cal differences, and reproved them 

 for having destroyed the connec- 

 tion between organic and inorganic 

 chemistry, and for having intro- 

 duced a purely formal systematisa- 

 tion according to merely external 

 differences. They rightly upheld 



