EPOCH OF THE THEORY OF OXYGEN". 281 



were, lie said, important to the good of humanity. The brutish idiot, 

 whom the state of the country at that time had placed in the judg- 

 ment-seat, told him that the republic wanted no sgavans. He was 

 dragged to the guillotine, May the 8th, 1794, and beheaded, in the 

 fifty-second year of his age ; a melancholy proof that, in periods of 

 political ferocity, innocence and merit, private virtues and public servi- 

 ces, amiable manners and the love of friends, literary fame and exalted 

 genius, are all as nothing to protect their possessor from the la>t. 

 extremes of violence and wrong, inflicted under judicial forms. 



Sect. 3. Nomenclature of the Oxygen Theory. 



As we have already said, a powerful instrument in establishing and 

 diffusing the new chemical theory, was a Systematic Nomenclature 

 founded upon it, and applicable to all chemical compounds, which 

 was soon constructed and published by the authors of the theory. 

 Such a nomenclature made its way into general use the more easily, 

 in that the want of such a system had already been severely felt ; 

 the names in common use being fantastical, arbitrary, and multiplied 

 beyond measure. The number of known substances had become so 

 great, that a list of names with no regulative principle, founded on 

 accident, caprice, and error, was too cumbrous and inconvenient tc 

 be tolerated. Even before the currency which Lavoisier's theory 

 obtained, these evils had led to attempts towards a more convenient 

 set of names. Bergman and Black had constructed such lists ; and 

 Guyton de Morveau, a clever and accomplished lawyer of Dijon, had 

 formed a system of nomenclature in 1782, before he had become a 

 convert to Lavoisier's theory, in which task he had been exhorted and 

 encouraged by Bergman and Macquer. In this system, 15 we do not 

 find most of the characters of the method which was afterwards 

 adopted. But a few years later, Lavoisier, De Morveau, Berthollet 

 and Fourcroy, associated themselves for the purpose of producing a 

 nomenclature which should correspond to the new theoretical views. 

 This appeared in 1787, and soon made its way into general use. The 

 main features of this system are, a selection of the simplest radical 

 words, by which substances are designated, and a systematic distribu- 

 tion of terminations, to express their relations. Thus, sulphur, com- 

 bined with oxygen in two different proportions, forms two acids, the 



16 Journal de Physique, 1782, p. 370. 



