THE. HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 41 
mostly in abstract general articles and in the prefaces to their books ; 
in the works themselves a very sharp line of demarcation was 
commonly drawn between “physical”? and ‘‘ chemical” processes, 
and the Kinetic theory had contributed to popularize this erroneous’ 
distinction in the same way that it had added the growth of correct 
views on other matters, viz., by offering a plausible “‘ explanation” in 
molecular language. Thus in O, E. Meyer’s ‘‘ Kinetic Gas Theory,” 
after an enumeration of the various possible movements of the 
molecules and of their constituent atoms, we find him developing 
the idea “that physics busies itself mainly with the mechanics of the 
molecules, chemistry with the equilibrium of their parts.” We 
can of course reject this distinction, which is in no wise a necessary 
consequence of the fundamental assumption of the theory, but we 
have still to meet the indubitable fact that the gas theory is very 
often unable to account for relations now well established experi- 
mentally, which Thermodynamics had foretold in advance of 
experimental evidence. To this it may be added that just as 
modern geometers can demonstrate the certain failure of all attempts 
to square the circle or twist an angle by means of the methods of 
Euclid, it is gradually becoming clear that the Kinetic hypothesis in - 
its present form, representing physical phenomena as the reaction of ~ 
a purely mechanical system, can hardly hope to arrive at the results 
involving the “ Eutrophy principle” of Thermodynamics, and, for 
instance, as the mutual dependence of vapor pressure and heat of 
vaporization, the connection between the freezing point of a solution 
and the latent heat of fusion of the solvent, between the minimum 
heat given out in an electric battery and the temperature co-efficient 
of its electro-motive force ; relations which to-day form the framework 
of chemical energetics. ; 
This recent progress has of course sadly shattered the belief in 
the all-sufficing nature of the Kinetic Theory, and will in time restore 
it to its proper position as an hyhothesis, to be employed so long as 
it proves useful and capable of alteration and modification to suit 
newly discovered facts, at some future date to share the fate of all 
Hypotheses, when, recognized at last as merely the symboiic rep- 
resentation of a part of the truths of some larger more general con- 
ception it will be thrown aside without a regret, its duty done, its 
usefulness at an end. 
