12 Dr. E. J. Mills on the First Principles of Chemistry. 



nature of respiration, of the composition of water, of the first 

 accurate quantitative methods in analysis, were none of them 

 atomic theorists. Can we say that, aided by the atomic theory, 

 we have equalled or surpassed those great achievements ? And 

 if the atomic theory is indeed the legitimate parent of the in- 

 terminable horde of derivatives, isomers, polymers, and the 

 like, which swarm across the science, why has it done nothing, 

 or so little, to train and educate them ? Or dare we venture 

 to surmise that there must be something inherent in the very 

 nature of that theory which accounts for this pauper progeny 

 — which explains why so many substances are made and then 

 set adrift in literature unmeasured, unclothed, and requiring 

 to be investigated all over again. The object of chemistry has 

 become an art of breeding. May it not be possible that many 

 minds, habituated to the ease and fancies of atomic speculation, 

 have lost the rigour and hardness required for the exactest 

 research? The examination of natural phenomena is best 

 effected with the minimum of assumption of any kind ; and 

 instead of demanding a theory, it would be better to ask how 

 we could dispense with one. It is juster and wiser to adhere 

 to facts than attempt to transcend them. 



(10) Chemistry is extremely deficient in symbolic expres- 

 sions for its facts, and, except in Brodie's partly published 

 calculus, has none to which mathematically deductive pro- 

 cesses can to any extent be applied. Provided that any equa- 

 tion does not violate the law of even numbers, and will add 

 correctly, we may write out any grouping of symbols we please, 

 and the prospect may hold ; but we cannot say that it must 

 hold. Contrast the enormous resources which are at the dis- 

 posal of the mathematician when he wishes to represent the 

 position of a point, and the light and fulness of his representa- 

 tion, with the pitiful poverty of " modern chemistry " (as it is 

 triumphantly termed), whose equations only tell you in sub- 

 stance that two and two make four. Assuredly it is time that 

 chemical investigators approached in earnest the subject of a 

 new symbolic system, and sought for data to lay it upon a 

 broad foundation. At present such important processes as con- 

 tinuous etherification and continuous saponification are utterly 

 unable to be suitably expressed. Some suggestions towards 

 the desired result may be stated as follows. 



(a) From what has been several times repeated in this 

 memoir, it will be apparent that every symbol, whether of che- 

 mical substance or of chemical operation, must represent a whole. 



Mathematical methods involve no discontinuity, and may 

 therefore be applied to such symbols. Thus instead of writing 

 2 H 2 + 2 = 2 H 2 0, some equation of the form %x + y = z would 



