244 Dr. T. Sterry Hunt on the 



division ; and these, being regarded as primary or original 

 species, are called chemical elements. These two processes 

 continually alternate with each other; and a species produced 

 by the first may yield, by division, species unlike its parents. 

 From this succession results double decomposition or equiva- 

 lent substitution, which always involves a union followed by 

 division, although, under the ordinary conditions, the process 

 cannot be arrested at the intermediate stage." 



§ 19. I have quoted the three preceding paragraphs from 

 an essay published by myself in 1853, on the Theory of 

 Chemical Changes. Therein I also wrote, " Chemical combi- 

 nation is interpenetration, as Kant has taught. When bodies 

 unite, their bulks, like their specific characters, are lost in 

 that of the new species." In 1854, however, in an essay 

 entitled i Thoughts on Solution '*, I declared, with regard 

 to Kant's view, that " The conception is mechanical, and 

 therefore fails to give an adequate idea. The definition of 

 Hegel, that the chemical process is an identification of the 

 different and a differentiation of the identical, is, however, com- 

 pletely adequate. Chemical union involves an identification 

 not only of the volumes (interpenetration mechanically consi- 

 dered), but of the specific characters of the combining bodies, 

 which are lost in those of the new species. . . . We may say 

 that all chemical union is nothing else than solution; the 

 uniting species, are, as it were, dissolved in each other, for 

 solution is mutual." 



The above considerations will serve to show the essential 

 nature of chemism, a process resulting in the genesis of che- 

 mical species, which are mineral or inorganic. 



§ 20. The force involved in the chemical process manifests 

 itself as radiant energy and electricity; and there is appa- 

 rently a tendency among modern dynamicists to confound 

 these activities with chemism itself, and thus to lose sight of 

 the essential significance of the chemical process as already 

 defined. Thus Clifford wrote of molecular motion, " which 

 makes itself known as light, or radiant heat, or chemical 

 action " f ; while Faraday was wont " to express his conviction 

 that the forces termed chemical affinity and electricity are one 



* Of the two essays above quoted, the first appeared in 1853, in the 

 American Journal of Science for March, and also in the Philosophical 

 Magazine [4] v. p. 526, and also, translated into German, in the Che- 

 misches Centralblatt for 1853, p. 849. The second was published in the 

 American Journal of Science for January 1854, and also in the Chemical 

 Gazette for 1855, page 90. Both will be found in the author's volume of 

 e Chemical and Geological Essays/ in which, for the extracts here given, 

 see pages 427, 428, and 450. 



t W. K. Clifford, < Essays,' ii. p. 17, 



