Note 13 — PRINCIPLES OF CHEMISTRY CHAPTER XV THE GROUPING OF THE ELEMENTS AND THE PERIODIC LAW

The laws of nature admit of no exceptions, and in this they clearly differ from such rules and maxims as are found in grammar, and other inventions, methods, and relations of man's creation. The confirmation of a law is only possible by deducing consequences from it, such as could not possibly be foreseen without it, and by verifying those consequences by experiment and further proofs. Therefore, when I conceived the periodic law, I (1869–1871, Note 9) deduced such logical consequences from it as could serve to show whether it were true or not. Among them was the prediction of the properties of undiscovered elements and the correction of the atomic weights of many, and at that time little known, elements. Thus uranium was considered as trivalent, U = 120; but as such it did not correspond with the periodic law. I therefore proposed to double its atomic weight—U = 240, and the researches of Roscoe, Zimmermann, and others justified this alteration (Chapter XXI.). It was the same with cerium (Chapter XVIII.) whose atomic weight it was necessary to change according to the periodic law. I therefore determined its specific heat, and the result I obtained was verified by the new determinations of Hillebrand. I then corrected certain formulæ of the cerium compounds, and the researches of Rammelsberg, Brauner, Clève, and others verified the proposed alteration. It was necessary to do one or the other—either to consider the periodic law as completely true, and as forming a new instrument in chemical research, or to refute it. Acknowledging the method of experiment to be the only true one, I myself verified what I could, and gave every one the possibility of proving or confirming the law, and did not think, like L. Meyer (Liebig's Annalen, Supt. Band 7, 1870, 364), when writing about the periodic law that ‘it would be rash to change the accepted atomic weights on the basis of so uncertain a starting-point.’ (‘Es würde voreilig sein, auf so unsichere Anhaltspunkte hin eine Aenderung der bisher angenommenen Atomgewichte vorzunehmen.’) In my opinion, the basis offered by the periodic law had to be verified or refuted, and experiment in every case verified it. The starting-point then became general. No law of nature can be established without such a method of testing it. Neither De Chancourtois, to whom the French ascribe the discovery of the periodic law, nor Newlands, who is put forward by the English, nor L. Meyer, who is now cited by many as its founder, ventured to foretell the properties of undiscovered elements, or to alter the ‘accepted atomic weights,’ or, in general, to regard the periodic law as a new, strictly established law of nature, as I did from the very beginning (1869).