THE CHEMICAL ELEMENTS. -j^c) 



can well understand that these principles may be further divisible 

 into an infinity of parts, which should more properly be called 

 principles. We understand, then, by principles simply such sub- 

 stances as have been separated and divided so far as our feeble 

 efforts are capable of doing." Here is a glimmering of scientific 

 principles. And so again in this sentence : 



" Some modern philosophers would persuade us that it is uncer- 

 tain whether the products we draw from compounds, and which 

 we call principles of chemistry, really exist as such in the com- 

 pounds. They say that fire, rarefying matter in the process of 

 distillation, is capable of giving an entirely different arrangement 

 to the parts from that which existed before, and may thus form 

 the salt, oil, and other products which are the results of the pro- 

 cess." 



Ldmery himself died in 1715, so that the edition of his work 

 from which we quote was published over forty years after his 

 death, showing that in the slow progress of knowledge at that 

 time the life of a scientific treatise was far longer than it is now. 

 The editor of the new edition adds copious notes, in which he 

 comments on some of the absurdities of his author, plainly indi- 

 cating that progress toward clearer views was constantly being 

 made ; but, at the same time, his own remarks are equally amus- 

 ing, and give abundant evidence of the utter confusion of thought 

 which still prevailed. To appreciate how great a work Lavoisier 

 accomplished, it is only necessary to read a few pages (more would 

 be intolerable), both of this treatise of Ldmery and also of the 

 " New Method of Chemistry " of Boerhaave, the two great stand- 

 ard works on the science of the eighteenth century, both in large 

 quarto volumes. These are far less repulsive than the chemical 

 writings of the previous century, which often dwelt at great 

 length on illustrations of chemical processes from the relations of 

 the sexes. They are less mystical, and frequently describe acute 

 observations of phenomena ; but they are equally deficient in sci- 

 entific spirit, full of crudities and empiricisms of the most trivial 

 kind, and this at a period when the mathematical sciences had 

 attained much of the elegance of form of our own day. Lavoi- 

 sier is known to us chiefly as the discoverer of the true theory of 

 combustion, but he was truly the father of modern chemistry, 

 and his claim to our regard rests more than anything else on the 

 fact that he gave to the subject for the first time a definite and 

 rigid scientific form. It will help you to appreciate the entire 

 change of conception introduced by Lavoisier if I quote from 

 Fourcroy's " Chemical Philosophy," third edition, 1806, the follow- 

 ing significant passage. Fourcroy was a contemporary of Lavoi- 

 sier, although twelve years younger. Lavoisier, as is well known, 

 fell a victim of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolu- 



