954 REPORT—1885. 
fulfilled in every case of chemical action. There is nothing new in this; in fact, 
it practically was stated by Faraday in 1834 (‘ Experimental Researches in 
Electricity,’ Series vii. §§ 858, 8591); and had due heed been given to Fara- 
day’s teachings we should scarcely now be so ignorant as we are of the conditions 
of chemical change. 
The questions— What is Electrolysis ? What is an Electrotyte? are all-important 
to the chemist, if my contention be accepted. Moreover, the consideration of 
chemical action from this point of view almost of necessity obliges us also to con- 
sider what it is that constitutes chemical affinity. I will not presume to offer any 
opinion on this subject ; but I would recall attention to the prominence which so- 
great an authority as Helmholtz gave in the Jast Faraday Lecture (‘Chem. Soe. 
Trans.,’ 1881, 277) to the view held by Faraday, and which is so definitely stated 
in a passage in his ‘ Experimental Researches ’” (Series viii. 918, also 850 and 869), 
Helmholtz used the words: ‘I think the facts leave no doubt that the very 
mightiest among the chemical forces are of electric origin. The atoms cling to 
their electric charges, and opposite electric charges cling to each other; but I do: 
not suppose that other molecular forces are excluded, working directly from atom 
to atom.’ In the passages which immediately follow, this physicist then makes. 
several statements of extreme importance, which directly bear upon the subject L 
desire to discuss, and which, therefore, I quote.® 
1 «Those bodies which, being interposed between the metals of the voltaic pile, 
render it active, wre all of them electrolytes, and it cannot but press upon the atten- 
tion of everyone engaged in considering this subject, that in those bodies (so 
essential to the pile) decomposition and the transmission of a current are so 
intimately connected that one cannot happen without the other. If, then, a voltaic 
trough have its extremities connected by a body capable of being decomposed, as. 
water, we shall have a continuous current through the apparatus; and whilst it 
remains in this state we may look at the part where the acid is acting upon the 
plates and that where the current is acting upon the water as the reciprocals of 
each other. In both parts we have the two conditions, inseparable in such bodies as 
these, namely, the passing of a current and decomposition ; and this is as true of the 
cells in the battery as of the water-cell; for no voltaic battery has as yet been con- 
structed in which the chemical action is only that of combination: decomposition is- 
always included, and is, I believe, an essential chemical part. 
‘But the difference in the two parts of the connected battery—that is, the decom- 
position or experimental cell and the acting cells—is simply this: in the former we: 
urge the current through, but it, apparently of necessity, is accompanied by decom- 
position ; in the latter we cause decompositions by ordinary chemical actions (which 
are, honever, themselves electrical), and, as a consequence, have the electrical current ;. 
and as the decomposition dependent upon the current is definite in the former case, 
so is the current associated with the decomposition also definite in the latter.’ 
* «All the facts show us that that power commonly called chemical affinity can 
be communicated to a distance through the metalsand certain forms of carbon ; that 
the electric current is only another form of the forces of chemical affinity ; that its 
power is in proportion to the chemical affinities producing it; that when it is 
deficient in force it may be helped by calling in chemical aid, the want in the former 
being made up by an equivalent of the latter ; that, in other words, the forces termed 
chemical affinity and electricity are one and the same, 
’ «Several of our leading chemists have lately begun to distinguish two classes of 
compounds—viz., molecular aggregates and typical compounds, the latter being united 
by atomic affinities, the former not. Electrolytes belong to the latter class. If we- 
conclude from the facts that every unit of affinity is charged with one equivalent 
either of positive or of negative electricity, they can form compounds, being elec- 
trically neutral, only if every unit charged positively unites under the influence of a 
mighty electric attraction with another unit charged negatively. You see that this: 
ought to produce compounds in which every unit of affinity of every atom is con- 
nected with one, and only one, other unit of another atom. This, as you will see- 
immediately, is the modern chemical theory of quantivalence, comprising all the 
saturated compounds. The fact that even elementary substances, with few excep- 
tions, have molecules composed of two atoms makes it probable that even in these- 
cases electric neutralisation is produced by the combination of two atoms, each 
