Apbil 29, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



667 



Kahlenberg's " Chemistry," I feel impelled, as 

 one who has had considerable experience in 

 teaching first-year students, to express my 

 hearty agreement with the points made by 

 Dr. Lewis. Let me say, to begin with, that it 

 is not improbable the teacher who deals with 

 the finished product of the one who has done 

 the " first-year teaching " is better capable of 

 judging the success of that teaching than the 

 first-year teacher himself. I have been in- 

 clined to judge my own work by the way my 

 students have been able to handle advanced 

 work, rather than by their success with the 

 first-year's work itself. I therefore believe 

 the teacher of advanced students is the most 

 competent critic of elementary work, and that 

 Dr. Lewis is in the best possible position to 

 judge of methods of laying foundations in 

 chemistry. 



The more important question at issue, how- 

 ever, which is squarely met by author, re- 

 viewer and critic, is whether we shall present 

 the conceptions of modern physical chemistry 

 to, first-year students. And it should be re- 

 membered that this is not the question of the 

 truth of a theory of electrolytic dissociation, 

 but whether such conceptions as electrolytic 

 dissociation, equilibrium and its disturbance, 

 mass-action, phase-rule and others, which 

 have furnished at least the best working 

 hypotheses for the superstructure of modern 

 chemistry, not merely theoretical, but indus- 

 trial, shall be used as fundamental concep- 

 tions, for the first-year, second-year and 

 every other year students; or shall be simply 

 introduced in one or two chapters, apart from 

 all the rest of the subject, as in Kahlenberg's 

 book; or perhaps not mentioned at all in ele- 

 mentary chemistry, being left for some future 

 time, should the student conclude to further 

 pursue the branch. The two chapters in Kahl- 

 enberg's book which take up these conceptions 

 might be absolutely omitted without injury 

 to the rest of the book, as far as anything in 

 the rest depends upon these two chapters. 

 Many other older chemistries have been 

 " brought down to date " by adding or in- 

 serting new chapters on these so-called mod- 

 ern conceptions. Is it not a little as if one 



were to modernize a medieval work on astron- 

 omy by adding a chapter on the work of 

 Copernicus? Is it not a rather sad commen- 

 tary on the chemical teaching of to-day when 

 a professor in one of our leading and pro- 

 gressive colleges pleads for the " chemistry of 

 a generation or more ago"? With no intent 

 at irreverence, I can not refrain from quoting 

 the lines that come to my mind from the old 

 hymn, 



'Twas good enough for father, 

 'Twas good enough for mother, 

 'Tis good enough for me. 



Seriously, Kahlenberg's book represents 

 probably the high-water mark of the older 

 chemistry, and especially in presenting " just 

 what the beginner wants to know in the way 

 he wants to have it presented," but is it the 

 neophyte who should be consulted regarding 

 what he is to be taught? In my own case it 

 has been far from an easy task to assimi- 

 late the fundamental conceptions of modern 

 chemistry, and I do not desire that any stu- 

 dent who goes out from my class-room shall 

 be under the necessity of a complete mental 

 revolution should he pursue the subject 

 farther. It is better, even for the beginner, 

 to study a smaller number of reactions as il- 

 lustrative of fundamental laws than to make 

 himself master of the great mass of facts of 

 descriptive chemistry with which many of our 

 text-books are filled. Elementary science 

 seems ever to be the last to be influenced by 

 great discoveries and generalizations. Only 

 within the last decade or so have the elemen- 

 tary text-books on the biological sciences been 

 appreciably influenced by the work of Dar- 

 win, so we need not be surprised if we flnd 

 little evidence, even in many of our college 

 text-books of chemistry, of the revolutions in 

 chemical thought wrought by such men as 

 Arrhenius, and Guldberg and Waage, and 

 MendeleeS, and Gibbs, and others, whose work 

 has been before the world of chemistry for 

 more than a quarter of a century. 



Jas. Lewis Howe 

 Washington and Lee Univeesity 

 April 12, 1910 



