102 Lagrange’s Memoirs. 
But he compared the elements of chemistry to those of algebra. 
These new elements formed bodies; they were intelligible; they 
offered more certainty. They resembled those of algebra, which, 
so far as is invented, offers no difficulty to the conception ; no truth 
to which we cannot arrive by a train of reasoning of the most pal- 
pable evidence. The entrance of chemical science seemed to him 
to offer these same advantages, with a little less certainty and proba- 
ble stability. Like algebra, it has undoubtedly its difficulties, its 
paradoxes which can be explained only by much sagacity, reflec- 
tion, and time ; it will have its problems that will remain forever in- 
soluble. . 
In this philosophical repose he lived until the revolution, without 
adding any thing to his mathematical discoveries; without even 
openinga single time his Mecanique Analytique, that had been pub- 
lished more than two years. 
The revolution offered to savans the opportunity of a great and 
difficult innovation ; the establishment of a metrical system, founded 
on nature, and perfectly analogous to our scale of numeration. La- 
grange was one of the commissioners that the Academy entrusted 
with this business ; he was one of its most ardent promoters; he 
wished the decimal system in all its purity: he would not forgive 
Borda the complacency he had shown in ordering fourths of a metre. 
He was little struck with the objection that was drawn against that 
system, from the small number of the divisions of its base. He al- 
most regretted that it was.not a prime number, such as 11, that 
necessarily had given a like denominator to all the fractions. We 
can regard, if we wish, this idea as one of those exaggerations which 
escape superior minds in the heat of dispute. He employed, how- 
ever, this number, 11, only to drive away the number 12, which 
bolder innovators would have substituted for that of 10, that consti- 
' tutes throughout the base of numeration. 
At the suppression of the Academies, they preserved temporat- 
ment, the commission charged with the establishment of the new 
system. Three months had scarcely elapsed, when, to purify this 
commission, they struck from its list the names of Lavoisier, Borda, 
Laplace, Coulomb, Brisson, and that of the astronomer that labored 
in France. Lagrange was retained. In capacity of president, by a let- 
ter which was long and full of goodness, he informed me that I might 
go and receive the official notice of my destitution. As soon as he 
knew of my arrival, he came to testify to me the regret given him by 
