558 KEPORT— 1886. 



Section E.— CHEMICAL SCIENCE. 

 President of the Section — William Crookes, F.K.S., V.P.C.S. 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2. 



The President delivered the following Address : — 



A glance over the Presidential Addresses delivered before this Section on former 

 occasions will show that the occupiers of this chair have ranged over a fairly wide 

 field. Some of my predecessors have given a general survey of the progress of 

 chemical science during the past year ; some, takmg up a technological aspect of 

 the subject, have discussed the bearings of chemistry upon our national industries ; 

 others, again, have passed in review the various institutions in this country for 

 teaching chemistry ; and in yet other cases the speaker has had the opportunity of 

 bringing before the scientific world, for the first time, an account of some important 

 original researches. 



On this occasion I venture to ask your attention to a few thoughts on the very 

 foundations of chemistry as a science — on the nature and the probable, or at least 

 possible, origin of the so-called elements. If the views to which I have been led 

 may at first glance appear heretical, I must remind you that in some respects they 

 are shared more or less, as I shall subsequently show, by not a few of the most 

 eminent authorities, and notably by one of my predecessors in this chair, Dr. J. H. 

 Gladstone, F.R.S., to whose brilliant address, delivered in 1883, 1 must beg to 

 refer you. 



Should it not sometimes strike us, chemists of the present day, that after all 

 we are in a positioa unpleasantly akin to that of our forerunners, the alchemists of 

 the Middle Ages ? These necromancers of a time long past did not, indeed, draw 

 80 sharp a line as do we between bodies simple and compound ; yet their life-task 

 was devoted to the formation of new combinations, and to the attempt to transmute 

 bodies which we commonly consider as simple and ultimate — that is, the metals. 

 In the department of synthesis they achieved very considerable successes ; in the 

 transmutation of metals their failure is a matter of history. 



But what are we of this so-called Nineteenth Centui-y doing in our laboratories 

 and our libraries ? Too many of us are content to acquii-e simply what others have 

 already observed and discovered, with an eye directed mainly to medals, certifi- 

 cates, diplomas, and other honours recognised as the fruits of 'passing.' Others 

 are seeking to turn the determined facts of chemistry to useful pm-poses ; whilst a 

 third class, sometimes not easily distinguished from the second, are daily educing 

 novel organic compounds, or are racking their ingenuity to prepare artificially some 

 product which Nature has hitherto furnished us through the instrumentality of 

 plants and animals. The practical importance of such investigations, and their 

 bearing on the industrial arts and on the purposes and needs of daily life, have been 

 signally manifested during the last half-century. 



Still a fourth class of inquirers, working at the very confines of our knowledge, 

 find themselves occasionally at least face to face with a barrier which has hitherto 

 proved impassable, but which must be overthrown, surmounted, or txirned, if che- 

 mical science is ever to develop into a definite, an organised unity. This barrier 



