412 Observations on Organic Chemistry 



result of which it is not difficult to foresee. When Berzelius first enter- 

 ed upon his career many hypotheses prevailed which he did not hesitate 

 to combat in the interest of science ; he went further, and history shows 

 with what success he substituted, by his indefatigable investigations, 

 better theories in their place. It is in the very nature of science that 

 many of his views should meet with the same fate ; more correct theo- 

 ries, notions nearer to truth, must at length replace them, and it is thus 

 only that the truth, which is the aim and object of our researches, will 

 at length be attained. 



To combat these more modern views with reasons derived from obser- 

 vations made long since, and without deigning to enter anew upon per- 

 sonal investigations as to their truth, has been the way taken by Ber- 

 zelius of late, a way which obviously cannot lead him to his object. 



Every author of a long and laborious investigation has an undoubt- 

 ed right to draw his own inferences as to the nature and composition of 

 the bodies he discovers, to assign to them a name, and to express them 

 by formulae, what part has Berzelius taken in these investigations? Has 

 he shown the incorrectness of these formulae by new experiments? Has 

 he proved the fallacy of the inferences and conclusions by placing them 

 in opposition to the results of his own experience? Nothing of the kind. 

 Why, and for what reason, then, does he alter the formulae of the chloric 

 ether compounds of Malaguti, of the napthaline compounds of Laurent, 

 of the benzoyl compounds, and the products of uric acid, with an arbi- 

 trariness hitherto unexampled ? Why does he admit into the composition 

 of these substances compounds which either do not at all exist, or to say 

 the least, the existence of which is very doubtful ? Has not his fixing the 

 formulas of cerebrote, cephalote, stearoconote, the formation of piotic, 

 hypopiotic, and piotinigic acids, shown how little was gained thereby, and 

 to what errors want of personal experience in this department led him. 



None of those chemists whose labours Berzelius thought were thus im- 

 proved adopted his views, and therefore an irreparable breach could not 

 fail to ensue between them. Never, under any circumstances, would 

 Berzelius have endured this kind of tyranny from others ; he would have 

 repudiated it with all his might; and that this has not yet been done 

 to him by other chemists arises simply from the high esteem in which 

 he is held for his immeasurable labours. 



Abandoning himself to this course, which would, in former times, have 

 been so utterly repugnant to him, he constructed, from an isolated in- 

 stance of the atomic theory, " that equal constitution does not neces- 

 sarily produce equal properties," the special theory of isomeric sub- 

 stances, and this led him to the invention of the catalytic force. 



