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LXIV. On Statical and Dynamical Ideas in Chemistry. — Part I. 

 Acid, Alkali, Salt, and Base. By Edmund J. Mills, D.Sc, 

 F.C.S.* 



1. HPHE history of chemistry exhibits, in one respect, a re- 

 J- markable parallel to the history of philosophy ; for no 

 other sciences have transmitted to the present epoch so many 

 unresolved and kindred controversies. The question of the One 

 and the Many, for example, is allied to that in which the unity 

 of matter is challenged by the variety of elements ; discussions 

 as to Absolute and Infinite resemble those which have reference 

 to the divisibility of matter ; Kosmos reappears in the law of 

 Definite Proportions ; and the contest about general principles 

 was an echo of the battles of realism. Of the attempts to de- 

 cide satisfactorily upon philosophical disputes, Ferrier considered 

 his ownf the best and purest ; and it is a masterpiece among its 

 kind : but I believe that no chemist has ever proposed an enter- 

 prise like that of the philosopher J. Nevertheless there are pro- 

 bably but few chemists who, amid the assault and confusion of 

 modern theories, would decline a criterion by which to estimate 

 the multitudinous claims so pertinaciously presented for their 

 allowance. Such a criterion seems attainable by the following 

 considerations. 



Adopting the primitive procedure of reason itself (which con- 

 sists in comparing one object with another), inductive science has 

 uniformly selected the analogical method as the basis of her 

 progress. In this manner, the notion of comparability has con- 

 ferred upon scientific reasoning a peculiar character, and made 

 it, for the most part, a process of convergence. The history of 

 the different sciences may, indeed, be compared to a group of con- 

 verging series having a common limit — that limit being the law, 

 for ever to be desired, from which all phenomena may be de- 

 duced. Such is the point towards which analogy, by compari- 

 son, and by abstracting differences, is ceaselessly making an ad- 

 vance. If this be admitted, a criterion of scientific progress 

 becomes possible ; and that criterion is the most general idea 

 existing at a given time as a factor in every branch of science. 

 An idea is, for this purpose, preferable to a law, because ideas 

 always determine the form of contemporary laws. Now it will 

 probably be conceded that the criterion at present required is at- 



* Communicated by the Author. 



t Institutes of Metaphysic, first edition, p. 63. 



X Freind's work, entitled "Chymical Lectures : In which almost all the 

 Operations of Chymistry are Reduced to their True Principles and the Laws 

 of Nature" (London, 1737), must not be supposed to have been written 

 with the intention above indicated. 



