August 24, igi 1] 



NATURE 



267 



published as newspaper articles in the Augsburger Allge- 

 meine Zeitung with the object of bringing within the ken 

 of the general public some of the more important conse- 

 quences of the advance of knowledge in connection with 

 the affairs of everyday life. 



Again, up to 1847, Berzelius had for many years pre- 

 pared annually a " Jahresbericht iiber die Fortschritte der 

 physischen Wissenschaften," but near the end of his life 

 this laborious undertaking was no longer possible for him, 

 and Liebig, in association with Hermann Kopp, the 

 physical chemist, commenced the "Jahresbericht," which, 

 so far as chemistry and the allied sciences is concerned, 

 continues to this day. It is no longer so important as 

 formerly, having fallen behind in date, but for certainly 

 forty years it was indispensable to every practising chemist 

 who was directly or indirectly interested in the progress of 

 the science. 



Since the days of seventy or eighty years ago, when 

 Liebig set these enterprises in motion, the number of 

 periodical publications devoted to recording advances in 

 chemistry has greatly increased, and a number of journals 

 now appear at regular intervals of a month, a fortnight, 

 or even a week, which have become necessary in conse- 

 quence of the specialisation which is characteristic of our 

 time. We have therefore journals of inorganic chemistry, 

 physical chemistry, applied chemistry, and some limited 

 even to one topic, such as electrolysis or radium. Liebig's 

 Annalen, however, continues to hold an honoured place in 

 ever\ chemical library. 



Since Liebig's day we have advanced in many directions 

 very far. Not only has the atomic theory given us by 

 Daiton long since become the mainstay of the chemist, but 

 we confidently assume, on good evidence, that we know 

 the order in which these small bodies stand in a molecule 

 of sugar, for example, and the relation of this order to the 

 visible forms of the crystals in which such substances are 

 often presented. We know, too, the relative masses of these 

 minute bodies — the atomic weights, so called — and it is 

 certain that these weights are directly connected with the 

 properties of the bodies the atoms compose. There is also 

 a relation among the atomic weights, which is broadly 

 summed up in what is known as the periodic law, from the 

 study of which most chemists are convinced that the so- 

 called elements were evolved out of something of a simpler 

 order, possibly one or two primal matters to which the 

 term element would more properly belong. Nor is this 

 all. Everyone has heard of radium, but few of the public, 

 I suppose, know its history. Henri Becquerel, so late as 

 1807, observed that compounds of the metal uranium emit 

 something which passes through many bodies opaque to 

 ordinary light, and which renders the air around it con- 

 ductive of electricity. Following up this observation, 

 Madame Curie discovered radium. Radium is a metal in 

 many respects like others previously known, but differing 

 from them in the extraordinary power of throwing off 

 electrically charged particles with enormous velocity, 

 together with a remarkable gaseous emanation. According 

 to the generally received view, which we owe to Prof. 

 Rutherford, we are face to face with a process which is 

 the reverse of that by which we may suppose the ordinary 

 elements, or some of them, to have been formed. The 

 decay of matter is thus indicated, and, though the process 

 affects only minute quantities of stuff in the earth, it is 

 sufficient to provide food for reflection to the geologist who 

 wants to account for the rate of cooling of the earth and tn 

 the cosmogonist who can imagine the operation proceeding 

 elsewhere on a far larger scale. There is temptation enough 

 here to the speculative mind. Everything is now supposed 

 to he expressible in terms of electricity, concerning the 

 nature of which no one knows anything. Chemical action 

 is attributed to exchanges of electric units, and matter of 

 all kinds is supposed to be made up of the same. In the 

 midst of all this confusion the clear duty of the chemist, at 

 any rate, is to follow the practice inculcated by Liebig and 

 stick to experiment, observation, and careful inductive 

 reasoning. 



One word in conclusion. The creation of a school of 

 thought, such as that of which the chemical school at 

 Giessen was the centre, reouires originality as well as 

 learning in the teacher, intelligence in the taught, and a 

 sympathetic relation between professors and students. 

 These are more important than buildings and appliances. 



NO. 2l82, VOL. 87] 



But much influence is exercised by the environment ; that is, 

 by the attitude of the public. Appreciation of learning and 

 interest in the results of research have long been provided 

 more freely in Germany than in England. Though we 

 cannot now admit, without qualification, the reproach of 

 Liebig, already quoted, it is still true to some extent that 

 what the public in England wants is invention rather than 

 discovery ; the applications of knowledge before the know- 

 ledge itself. 



Some people will doubt, perhaps, whether we are so 

 much behind Germany, " learned, indefatigable, deep- 

 thinking Germany," as Carlyle called her. We have an 

 immense amount of popularisation of the results of science, 

 but it is to be feared that much of this is too easy, shallow, 

 and misleading. 



I think the difference between the two peoples is to 

 be partly acounted for by the attitude of the Governments 

 in ihe two countries. In England it is the custom to 

 leave the investigation of many important subjects, like 

 agriculture, to the chance of private benefaction or volun- 

 tary effort. In England, again, it is only in comparatively 

 recent times that assistance out of public funds has been 

 given to the universities. This attitude of the Government 

 has an immense influence in directing popular views of 

 institutions, of things, of men. That which the masses 

 find placed in positions of advantage by the powers set 

 over them are naturally held in higher esteem than those 

 which are always kept in the background or in a position 

 of evident inferiority. In Germany the university chairs 

 are occupied by the greatest specialists in every department, 

 and these, are men who are honoured at Court, consulted 

 by Ministers, and trusted by manufacturers. But, after 

 all, when we have exhausted the enumeration of all the 

 adventitious influences at work in both countries, it seems 

 as though there were some elements in the mental con- 

 stitution of the different peoples which leads them to handle 

 the same subject of inquiry in different ways. It has been 

 so in the study of chemistry. 



At the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the aid 

 of the principles bequeathed by Lavoisier, the facts which 

 had Keen established bv Priestley and Cavendish, the dis- 

 coveries of Humphry Davy, and the atomic theory of 

 Daiton, France and England were engaged in laying the 

 foundations of the new science. At that time Germany had 

 no chemists. Liebic himself bears witness, in his auto- 

 biography, 'that in his vouth "it was a very wretched time 

 for chemistry in Germany." During the latter half of the 

 centurv there arose in nearly every German university 

 a famous "school of chemistry, and in practicallv all cases 

 it has been a school for the cultivation of so-called " organic 

 chemistry," in which department German chemists have 

 achieved the most brilliant successes. Nothing can be more 

 important than Kekute's theory of the aromatic compounds. 

 Nothing can be finer than the synthetical work of von 

 Baeyer and Emil Fischer in connection with indigo, the 

 sugars, and the proteins, or albuminoid substances, the 

 chief basis of the animal tissues. But it cannot be main- 

 tained that they have been equally distinguished for the dis- 

 covery of broad general principles. German triumphs have 

 been more frequently the result of that patient attention to 

 detail which seems characteristic of the German mind. 



Take, bv way of illustration, the problems which at the 

 present time loom largest before the chemical world. There 

 are first the relations among the atomic weights, dis- 

 covered bv Newlands, an Englishman, and worked out by 

 Mendeleeff, a Russian: next, the arrangement of atoms in 

 space, or stereo-chemistrv, to which the clue was furnished 

 b) Le Bel. a Frenchman, and van 't Hoff, a Dutchman: 

 next, the process of electrolysis and the constitution of salts 

 in solution, of which bv far the most important theory, the 

 theory of free ions, was supplied bv Arrhenius, a Swede. 

 Again, there is radio-activity with all its consequences, the 

 isolation of radium bv Madame Curie, and the greater 

 part of its wonderful history, worked out by Rutherford 

 and Ramsay, both British chemists. To those great fields 

 of inquiry "Germany has, doubtless, made contributions, 

 but she did not discover them. 



My own impressions are strengthened bv a passage which 

 I will venture to auote from a modern work, "The 

 History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century, 

 In Dr. Theodore Merz. himself a German, though domi- 

 ciled in England. He savs (vol. i., p. 300)'- "The largest 



