158 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



has taken such pains as he to gauge the value of 

 many single and isolated steps that had been taken 

 before him, and to combine them all through his own 

 researches into a comprehensive doctrine. The practi- 

 cal importance of these labours so long insufficiently 

 understood will doubtless in the near future be real- 

 ised in proportion as the increasing competition of in- 

 dustry shall emphasise the necessity of studying the eco- 

 nomics of production : this economy consisting not only 

 in the absence of waste of matter, but likewise in the 

 saving of work i.e., in the absence of waste of energy. 1 



1885-87) ; the second edition, of 

 which the first volume appeared 

 in 1891, is in progress, and will 

 comprise three volumes. It is 

 divided into three parts : Stochio- 

 metrie, Chemiscke Energie, and Ver- 

 loandtschaftslehre. Nothing can 

 give a better idea of the enormous 

 development of chemical science 

 in the nineteenth century than a 

 glance at those two monuments of 

 learning and ' research, Beilstein's 

 ' Organische Chemie ' (Leipzig, 

 1893-1900, 5 vols., 3rd ed.) and 

 Ostwald's ' Allgemeine Chemie.' 

 They form the basis for future 

 development, as did Leopold 

 Gmelin's ' Handbuch der Chemie ' 

 for the greater part of the past 

 century. The first edition of 

 Gmelin appeared in 1817. See 

 Kopp's ' Geschichte der Chemie ' 

 (vol. ii. p. 100). Since the publi- 

 cation of his great text-book, Prof. 

 Ostwald has done enormous ser- 

 vice to science by the foundation 

 jointly with Prof, van't Hoff of the 

 ' Journal fur physicalische Chemie,' 

 in 1889, and still more by the open- 

 ing of the first laboratory specially 

 designed for physical chemistry, in 

 Leipzig, in the year 1887. But 

 perhaps the most original and 

 suggestive work of Ostwald is 



his work on the scientific founda- 

 tions of Analytical Chemistry 

 (Leipzig, 3rd ed., 1901. Transl. 

 by G. M'Gowan). 



1 How recent is the systematic 

 treatment and general recognition 

 of physical, theoretical, or general 

 chemistry can be seen from the 

 historical sketches which had been 

 published prior to Ostwald's great 

 work. Kopp, in his excellent ac- 

 count of the development of chem- 

 istry, published in the Munich col- 

 lection, and frequently referred to 

 in the fifth chapter of this work 

 (vol. i. pp. 382, &c. ), has hardly any 

 occasion to refer to physical chem- 

 istry up to the year 1870. This 

 is the more remarkable as Kopp 

 himself was a solitary ingenious 

 worker in this isolated province. 

 A good account of his labours 

 is contained in Thorpe's ' Essays 

 in Historical Chemistry,' 1894, 

 p. 299. A later and brilliant 

 writer on the historical growth 

 of chemical knowledge, Dr A. 

 Ladenburg, in his 'Vortriige iiber 

 die Entwicklungsgeschichte der 

 Chemie' (2nd ed., Braunschweig, 

 1887), condenses all he has to say 

 regarding this subject into a few 

 pages in his last lecture. If Ger- 

 man science is destined to dis- 



