The general law of evolution, if it does not actually involve the conclusion that the so-called elements are compounds, yet affords _a priori_ ground for suspecting that they are such. The implication is that, while the matter composing the Solar System has progressed physically from that relatively-homogeneous state which it had as a nebula to that relatively-heterogeneous state presented by Sun, planets, and satellites, it has also progressed chemically, from the relatively-homogeneous state in which it was composed of one or a few types of matter, to that relatively-heterogeneous state in which it is composed of many types of matter very diverse in their properties. This deduction from the law which holds throughout the cosmos as now known to us, would have much weight even were it unsupported by induction; but a survey of chemical phenomena at large discloses several groups of inductive evidences supporting it. The first is that since the cooling of the Earth reached an advanced stage, the components of its crust have been ever increasing in heterogeneity. When the so-called elements, originally existing in a dissociated state, united into oxides, acids, and other binary compounds, the total number of different substances was immensely augmented, the new substances were more complex than the old, and their properties were more varied. That is, the assemblage became more heterogeneous in its kinds, in the composition of each kind, and in the range of chemical characters. When, at a later period, there arose salts and other compounds of similar degrees of complexity, there was again an increase of heterogeneity, alike in the aggregate and in its members. And when, still later, matters classed as organic became possible, the multiformity was yet further augmented in kindred ways. If, then, chemical evolution, so far as we can trace it, has been from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, may we not fairly suppose that it has been so from the beginning? If, from late stages in the Earth's history, we run back, and find the lines of chemical evolution continually converging, until they bring us to bodies which we cannot decompose, may we not suspect that, could we run back these lines still further, we should come to still decreasing heterogeneity in the number and nature of the substances, until we reached something like homogeneity?