82 



THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



^ 



living 



things did produce substances — were in fact 

 almost entirely built up of material combinations, 

 which could not be evolved by the agency of mere 



physical forces^ either in the grand laboratory 

 nature, or under the hands of the chemist. But 



of 



now 



all this has changed. Chemists have already succeeded 

 in building up some hundreds of such compounds and 

 as each month passes by, the list is swelled by fresh 

 conquests. The speciality then of these compounds 

 has passed away, the difference between Organic and 

 Inorganic chemistry is fast vanishing — has, in fact 



well-nigh vanished. 



At all events, these names can no 

 longer be retained as definite marks ; they have lost 

 their significance, and if it be desirable still to partition 

 off the great department of chemical compounds formerly 

 represented by the word ' organic,' it must be done by 

 fixing upon some really common and distinguishing 

 characteristic of the members of the group, and em- 

 bodying this in some new class name or phrase under 

 which they can be ranged. Numerous suggestions 

 have been made, but none of them seems so good as 

 that of Kekule. All the compounds named ^ organic' 

 invariably contained carbon as a constituent, and with 

 the exception of at most three or four, all the com- 

 pounds of carbon were formerly placed under this cate- 

 gory, so that when Kekule not long since brought out a 

 work 1, <^ On the Chemistry of Carbon Compounds,' its 



1 ' Lehrbucii Ser Organischen Chemie, oder der Chemie den Kohlen- 

 stoffverbindungen,' i86i, in which this subject is discussed at pp.8-li- 



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