6 MORRIS LOEB 



Chemistry, as I have intimated, owes its great prominence, 

 in popular estimation, to those material successes of the 

 branch called organic chemistry, which have rapidly suc- 

 ceeded each other during the last thirty years. Their founda- 

 tion was laid by that grand work of systematization, with 

 which we find connected the most glorious names of modern 

 chemistry, Liebig and Wohler, Laurent and Gerhardt, 

 Dumas, Hofmann, Wurtz, Williamson, Couper, Kekule, and 

 Cannizzaro. So extensive and intricate is this system, and 

 yet so fruitful in all its ramifications, that it has well repaid 

 the intense labor bestowed upon it by these men and the hosts 

 of their pupils and successors. But we must not lose sight of 

 the fact that, after the first successful generalizations, the 

 work has been mainly deductive and not inductive. We have 

 had an algebra devised for us with its own notation and its 

 own processes of reasoning: it remains for us to combine these 

 ingeniously, so that they may apply to the special problems 

 with which we are confronted. Our success is so great, that 

 it appears that the propositions upon which we started are 

 axiomatic instead of hypothetical, and general instead of 

 special; so that, when we have quoted one of them, we believe 

 that we have stated the first principle to which any question 

 can be referred. As a matter of fact, organic chemistry by it- 

 self only clears up the questions of composition and consti- 

 tution and of change within the molecule. The interesting 

 problems as to the nature of what we call atoms, the prop- 

 erties of the elements, the peculiar behavior of the molecules 

 toward each other, and grandest problem of physical sci- 

 ence the correlation of matter and energy, do not present 

 themselves to the organic chemist. We shall have occasion 

 to see how reluctant he is to accept other explanations than 

 those given by his formulae for phenomena which these 

 formulae seem incapable of explaining fully. 



