which yields results of the greatest interest. I regard it therefore as an impossible task to indicate the lines on which research should be carried out. All that I can do is to call attention to certain problems awaiting solution; but their relative importance must necessarily be a matter of personal bias, and others might with perhaps greater right suggest wholly different problems.
The fundamental task of inorganic chemistry is still connected with the classification of elements and compounds. The investigation of the classification of carbon compounds forms the field of organic chemistry; while general or physical chemistry deals with the laws of reaction, and the influence of various forms of energy in furthering or hindering chemical change. And classification centers at present in the periodic arrangement of the elements, according to the order of their atomic weights. Whatever changes in our views may be concealed in the lap of the future, this great generalization, due to Newlands, Lothar Meyer and Mendelejev, will always retain a place, perhaps the prominent place, in chemical science.
Now it is certain that no attempt to reduce the irregular regularity of the atomic weights to a mathematical expression has succeeded; and it is, in my opinion, very unlikely that any such expression, of not insuperable complexity, and having a basis of physical meaning, will ever be found. I have already, in an address to the German Association at Cassel, given an outline of the grand problem which awaits solution. It can be shortly stated then: While the factors of kinetic and of gravitational energy, velocity and momentum, on the one hand, and force and distance, on the other, are simply related to each other, the capacity factors of other forms of energy—surface, in the case of surface-energy; volume, in the case of volume-energy; entropy for heat; electric capacity when electric charges are being conveyed by means of ions; atomic weight, when chemical energy is being gained or lost—all these are simply connected with the fundamental chemical capacity, atomic weight or mass. The periodic arrangement is an attempt to bring the two sets of capacity factors into a simple relation to each other; and while the attempt is in so far a success, inasmuch as it is evident that some law is indicated, the divergences are such as to show that finality has not been attained. The central problem in inorganic chemistry is to answer the question—why this incomplete concordance? Having stated the general question, it may conduce to clearness if some details are given.
1. The variation of molecular surface energy with temperature is such that the surface-energy, for equal numbers of molecules distributed over a surface, is equal for equal intervals of temperature below the temperature at which surface-energy is zero—that is, the critical point. This gives a means of determining the molecular weights of liquids, and we assume that the molecular weight of a compound is accurately the sum of the atomic weights of the constituent elements.
