ABSTRACT
The existence of natural families in chemistry is admitted by the best inquirers, but the classification remains to be made. The need of the classification must lead to the use of the comparative method, both being based on the common consideration of the uniformity of certain preponderant phenomena in a long series of different bodies. Chemistry is at present only a nascent science; general methods are as yet scarcely recognized in connection with it; and only a very few researches afford an example of the comparative method. By the important series of electrochemical phenomena, chemistry becomes a prolongation of physics; and at its other extremity, it lays the foundations of physiology by its research into organic combinations. The phenomena of chemistry are more complex than those of physics, and are certainly dependent on them. The high philosophical properties of chemistry are more striking in regard to doctrine than to method.
