306 THE REVIVAL OF INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 



Du Bois-Beymond is being realized; with the aid of physics it is attain- 

 ing an insight into the dynamical aspect of the science which it could 

 never have reached unassisted. But it is not alone by supplying new 

 methods and suggesting new points of view that physics is aiding the 

 revival of inorganic chemistry. Perhaps equally important is the fact 

 that the rising school of physical chemists, unhampered by the tradi- 

 tions and limitations of organic chemistry, is finding it necessary to 

 explore the whole range of the science in search of material for its 

 investigations. The physical chemist is neither organic nor inorganic, 

 or rather he is either, according to his requirements, but it is precisely 

 because the inorganic field is wider and less developed than the organic 

 that his demands are more likely to be productive of activity. 



Energetics is now the basis of chemistry, and it is to be expected, 

 therefore, that inorganic chemistry will not, in the future, have to pass 

 through a period of arrested development and formula worship, such 

 as have so long affected organic chemistry. There will always be com- 

 pound makers, but their aim will be, not the establishment of constitu- 

 tional formulas alone, but the study of the laws of chemical energy and 

 the solution of the problem of the nature of matter. We may expect, 

 too, that the still sharp line of demarcation between inorganic and 

 organic chemistry and between dead and living matter will disappear. 

 The inorganic chemist may not affect the synthesis of a proteid, but he 

 will be able, with his wider knowledge, to contribute more to the 

 solution of the problem of the nature of life than any amount of struc- 

 turizing and synthesizing alone can do. To comprehend life we must 

 understand carbon, but we can no more fully comprehend carbon with- 

 out an understanding of the other elements than we can explain the 

 earth without a knowledge of the other planets, or man without a 

 knowledge of the fish. He, then, who pursues inorganic chemistry is 

 not only contributing to a higher development of our science than can 

 be reached by the study of carbon compounds alone, but is perhaps 

 doing as much as the organic chemist toward realizing one of the 

 greatest aims of research — the comprehension of life and its explana- 

 tion in terms of physical science. 



