A Manual of the Chemistry of the Carbon Compounds

8 THE CHEMISTBY OF
both how to decompose mineral compounds into their elements, and
also how to build them up again. With organic bodies, however, it
was not so; whilst their composition could easily be ascertained, their
synthesis was found to be surrounded by difficulties so great as to
appear insurmountable, and hence it was assumed that the elements
present in living bodies obeyed laws entirely different from those
which rule inanimate nature. It was said that organic bodies might
be changed into other organic compounds, but that it was impossible
to prepare any such body by synthesis.
The further development of chemistry has shown, however, that
such views were erroneous, and as soon as a clearer insight into the
chemical constitution of organic compounds was gained, methods were
found by which compounds, which hitherto had only been formed by
the process of life, could be built up from their constituent elements.
There exist, however, certain organio substances possessing a
structure essentially different from that of any inorganic body. This
organized structure, which is the sole and direct product of life, is seen
in the simple cell, the germ of all living organisms. This cannot be
artificially prepared, whereas liquid and crystalline organic compounds
have been produced by synthetical methods in such numbers that
there can hardly be any doubt that all of them can be built up from
their elements.
We have now come to the conviction that the same chemical laws
rule animate and inanimate nature, and that the distinctive behaviour
which the compounds formed by the vital process exhibit, depends
only on the fact that they are carbon compounds. The cause of their
peculiar properties is consequently to lie looked for in the chemical
nature of carbon itself, and we must therefore first enter upon the
study of the chemical properties of this element, and compare them
with those of the other elements.