40 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 
chapter, not based on the historical foundation of the behaviour of 
gases but as following almost by necessity from the fact that sugar 
will dissolve in water. In 1847 the Royal Society rejected the first 
modern article on the Kinetic Theory (by J. J. Waterston) with the 
curt judgment ‘‘nonsense.” In 1892 the paper, discovered in a 
pigeon hole, is published with apologies ; the hypothesis itself is 
accepted by perhaps the majority of scientific men as a fundamental 
“fact” underlying all chemistry and physics, and the story of the 
molecules is appointed to be said or sung in universities and high 
schools throughout the land. 
Now if there is any one thing that the history of science teaches, 
it is that as soon as an hypothesis forsakes its proper sphere and 
becomes enthroned as a dogma, trouble is sure to ensue. In this 
case as in others the first signs were noticed in the obstinate resistance 
offered to any modifications in detail by which the hypothesis might 
be accommodated to newly discovered facts. The behavior of 
matter in dilute solution (in water, etc.,) resembles in many respects 
that of the gases we have been considering, but all attempts to bring 
the molecular hypothesis into shape to account for these phenomena 
were long resisted by the large majority of chemists ; instead of 
rejoicing that that their ‘only true’ faith had conquered another 
world, every effort was made to discredit its recent extensions,—as 
if the very life of a theory did not depend on its adaptability to 
newly discovered classes of facts ! 
A marked change, however, has recently come over the attitude 
of the more prominent scientific men with regard to this subject, 
and perhaps what has hastened it most is the recent rapid growth of 
of Thermodynamics, a science which, recognizing no special theory 
of matter, has succeeded in arriving at the most varied quantitative 
relations among physical phenomena merely by following to their 
logical conclusions a few experimentally discovered natural laws. 
These laws (more especially the two so-called ‘‘ main principles ”) 
and the consequences deduced from them have been found to apply 
as well to the most complicated chemical processes as to the simplest 
physical changes (of the melting of ice and the boiling of water), and 
the complete qualitative and quantitative identity of chemical and 
physical phenomena has thus been clearly manifested. Now although 
.this identity had long been preached by chemists and others, it was 
