n the briefest
glance at electro-chemistry should pause to acknowledge its profound
debt to the new theories as to the bonding of atoms to form molecules,
and of the continuity between solution and electrical dissociation.
However much these hypotheses may be modified as more light is shed on
the geometry and the journeyings of the molecule, they have for the time
being recommended themselves as finder-thoughts of golden value. These
speculations of the chemist carry him back perforce to the days of his
childhood. As he then joined together his black and white bricks he
found that he could build cubes of widely different patterns. It was in
propounding a theory of molecular architecture that Kekule gave an
impetus to a vast and growing branch of chemical industry--that of the
synthetic production of dyes and allied compounds.

It was in pure research, in paths undirected to the market-place, that
such theories have been thought out. Let us consider electricity as an
aid to investigation conducted for its own sake. The chief physical
generalization of our time, and of all time, the persistence of force,
emerged to view only with the dawn of electric art. When it was observed
that electricity might become heat, light, chemical action, or
mechanical motion, that in turn any of these might produce electricity,
it was at once indicated that all these phases of energy might differ
from each other only as the movements in circles, volutes, and spirals
of ordinary mechanism. The suggestion was confirmed when electrical
measurers were refined to the utmost precision, and a single quantum of
energy was revealed a very Proteus in its disguises, yet beneath these
disguises nothing but constancy itself.

"There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that
withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty." Because the
geometers of old patiently explored the properties of the triangle, the
circle, and the ellipse, simply for pure love of truth, they laid the
corner-stones for the arts of the architect, the engineer, and the
navigator. In like manner it was the disinterested work of investigation
conducted by Ampere, Faraday, Henry and their compeers, in ascertaining
the laws of electricity which made possible the telegraph, the
telephone, the dynamo, and the electric furnace. The vital relations
between pure research and economic gain have at last worked themselves
clear. It is perfectly plain that a man who has