1819.] Sur ?Identité des Forces Chimiques et Electriques. 369 
rate, and that I should probably have formed a more favourable 
opinion of it than he conceived I had done if I had perused the 
work itself. To put it in my power to do so, he promised to 
send me the French translation of it, which had been made 
under his own eye, and was, he said, in many respects, superior 
to the original. In consequence of this letter, to which I returned 
the proper answer, I received, some months ago, the work, of 
which | have transcribed the title page at the commencement of 
this article, and I now sit down to give the best analysis of it 
which I can, both for my own sake, and for-the advantage of 
my readers. It gives me no small holes of pleasure to have it 
in my power to do justice to Professor CErsted, whose knowledge 
of the science of chemistry, and whose powers of arrangement 
and generalization, are very uncommon. The book is highly 
worthy the perusal of all those British chemists who aim at the 
improvement and the perfection of their science. It is rather 
surprising that a work of such originality and value should have 
remained for these four years quite unknown in this country ; for 
I am not aware that any notice of it has been taken either in 
Great Britain or in France, except the very imperfect and inac- 
curate outline which I gave in my Sketch of the Improvements of 
Chemistry for the Year 1815. 
M. Géirsted considers the state of chemistry to be similar to 
that of mechanical philosophy before the appearance of Galileo, 
Descartes, Huygens, and Newton. Many important facts were 
known before the time of these illustrious philosophers ; but these 
facts had not been reduced to their simplest principles ; the con- 
nexion between them was not perceived ; the fundamental laws 
were not discovered. At present, mechanical philosophy is 
brought to such a state of perfection that it embraces all the 
movements of the universe as a great mechanical problem, the 
solution of which enables us to calculate beforehand a vast 
number of particular phenomena. 
Hitherto the object of chemists has been to bring all the 
effects under the action of affinities, as the last limit that can be 
attained ; but scarcely any experiments have been made upon 
affinity im general: no connexion has been shown to exist 
between affinities : it has not been possible to reduce them to 
one general principle, from which all the phenomena can be 
deduced. The object of the work, of which I propose to give 
an account, is to commence this important generalization. He 
adopts that explanation of chemical phenomena known in Ger- 
many by the name of the dyxamic system, which he considers as 
having been first started by Ritter, and as having been fully 
established by the great galvanic discoveries of Berzelius and - 
— 
e work is divided into nine chapters, of each of which J 
shall give a successive analysis. 
Vou. XIII. N° V. 2A 
