and Inorganic substances, and can set forth this primary static Law.
LAW I. The elements which compose Organic substances are the same as those which compose Inorganic substances ; but in the Organic they occur as higher multiples.
In an exhaustive view all organic substances are to be considered --
1st. As to their Elements ;
2nd. As to the Synthesis of these elements, i. e. their modes of combination;
3rd. As to their Form.
Having noted the difference of elementary composition, I will now pass to the difference of Synthesis. As the letters of the alphabet acquire new significations with new arrangements, although each letter preserves throughout its integral value, so do the elements acquire new powers by new arrangements. The letters P o t nay form the word Pot, or the word Top ; so also Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen, in exactly the same proportions, may form Starch or Gum, It is in consequence, however, of chemists not distinctly appreciating the difference between elementary analysis and immediate analysis (or, to reverse the problem, elementary synthesis and immediate synthesis) that so much confusion reigns in this part of science ; among other points I will notice that of the pretended impossibility of forming organic substances by artificial means, an impossibility which is at present owing to our ignorance of the proximate principles and their synthesis. In Miller's Physiology we find this note :
"Berard, Proust, Dobereiner, and Hatchett, believe that they have succeeded in producing organic compounds by artificial processes; but their results have not been sufficiently confirmed. Woehler's experiments afford the only trustworthy instances of the artificial formation of these substances. Woehler discovered that a watery solution of ammonia, after being saturated with cyanogen, contained a considerable quantity of oxalic acid. Again, in the preparation of potassium from charcoal and carbonate of potash, a black mass passes over with the metal, which, when treated with water, yields a large proportion of oxalic acid. Oxalic acid, however, is not regarded as a binary compound of carbon and oxygen ; the fact that it undergoes decomposition when its water of crystallization is extracted is no proof to the contrary, for nitric acid is decomposed by the extraction of the last portion of its water. Woehler also finds, that urea is obtained in place of cyanide of ammonia when a solution of chloride of ammonia is poured over freshly precipitated cyanide of silver, chloride of silver being formed at the same time. Urea is also formed in the decomposition of cyanide of lead by solution of ammonia. The solution at first contains cyanide of ammonia; but by evaporation of the fluid this salt is converted into urea. In the same way, also, whet cyanous acid is mixed with water or liquid ammonia cyanide of ammonia is first formed, and thence urea.
The point is worth consideration. If you analyse an organic substance into its elementary parts, you cannot again reconstruct the original substance from those elements. True. But the reason is that you have made an elementary analysis, and the synthesis required is not elementary, but immediate. The substance was not formed of the four organogens and some mineral elements it was not formed directly of the elements into which it is decomposed it was formed of proximate' principles, and these proximate principles were formed of the elements: In inorganic substances precisely the same difficulty meets us. We can decompose saltpetre into its elements oxygen, nitrogen, and potassium. But we cannot recompose saltpetre by the direct combination of these elements, any more than we can so recompose organic substances ; because saltpetre is formed by a synthesis of nitric acid with potass, and not directly. Thus, as Comte remarks in his chapter on Chemistry, Wöhler would never have succeeded in producing urea if he had endeavoured to combine the elements which compose it; he succeeded because he combined its proximate principles.
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