Arrhenius showed itself singularly fertile
and had to be regarded, at all events, as a very expressive image, if
not, indeed, entirely in conformity with reality.
It would certainly be contrary to all experience, and even to common
sense itself, to suppose that in dissolved chloride of sodium there is
really free sodium, if we suppose these atoms of sodium to be
absolutely identical with ordinary atoms. But there is a great
difference. In the one case the atoms are electrified, and carry a
relatively considerable positive charge, inseparable from their state
as ions, while in the other they are in the neutral state. We may
suppose that the presence of this charge brings about modifications as
extensive as one pleases in the chemical properties of the atom. Thus
the hypothesis will be removed from all discussion of a chemical
order, since it will have been made plastic enough beforehand to adapt
itself to all the known facts; and if we object that sodium cannot
subsist in water because it instantaneously decomposes the latter, the
answer is simply that the sodium ion does not decompose water as does
ordinary sodium.
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