2G2 Dr. E. J. Mills on Chemical Substance 



numerical relations of the highest value and merit, are usually- 

 understood to mean much more than any experimenter has yet 

 been able to adduce. Consider, for instance, the formula 



S}°- 



I pass over the assertions that H, H, and stand for atoms fixed 

 in space or elsewhere*, one H being above the other, and the 

 being outside the two, and so forth. Almost every one takes that 

 formula to mean, among other things, that water contains hy- 

 drogen and oxygen — probably because hydrogen and oxygen are 

 obtainable from water. Yet when the hydrogen and oxygen 

 united they underwent loss, and are consequently no more the 

 antecedent hydrogen and oxygen than liquid chlorine is gaseous 

 chlorine. Our symbolic system does not guard against this 

 error. It is an evident and not an uncommon statement that we 

 can only judge of a substance by its reactions — that is, by motion. 

 But if so, the statical argument is abandoned, and we can neither 

 continue to ascribe discrete parts to chemical substance nor im- 

 plicate them in its formulae. 



The result of the preceding investigation may perhaps surprise 

 the reader. It is now evident that, side by side with the great 

 theory of limits, has been running a confluent stream, never 

 mixing therewith and for the most part unnoticed. How long 

 they may continue to flow together is a question of the greatest 

 moment to theoretical chemistry. When the inconsistency be- 

 tween the atomic and homogeneous theory is more generally 

 realized, fewer minds will be found to admit them both simul- 

 taneously. 



2. Chemical Functions. 



It has been shown that chemical substance cannot be regarded, 

 and is not practically regarded, statically. Our contemplation of 

 it is an act, the result of certain experimental acts ; beyond this 

 we know nothing ; and the precise idea of it, as above arrived at, 

 is therefore commensurate with a mode of motion. 



When from chemical substance we descend to groups of che- 

 mical substances, modes of motion of subordinate generality 

 require to be contemplated ; and these are chemical functions. 

 An inquiry into the nature of these is not without its value, and, 

 as in the previous paper, turns at first upon the use of words. 



The term alcohol, just like " acid/ - ' first implied a specific sub- 

 stance ; but its meaning has grown generic with the advance of 

 chemical discovery. The word is now applied to bodies gene- 



* The atoms being regarded by all atomists as in some way fixed, though 

 not by all as fixed in space, an extraspatial region becomes a necessity, 



