386 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



8. 



Lavoisier. 



theory has been gradually defined and variously modi- 

 fied in the course of this century, and is still in a some- 

 what unstable condition. We are also bound to attach 

 the greatest importance to the preliminary step taken 

 by Lavoisier, who is even more justly called the father 

 of modern chemistry than Kepler is called the father 

 of modern astronomy. 



The exact claims of Lavoisier to this important place in 

 the history of chemistry have been variously stated : l 



1 Continental writers are pretty 

 unanimous in dating modern chem- 

 istry from the time of Lavoisier 

 (1743-1794). In this country there 

 has been less unanimity, the names 

 of Black, of Cavendish, of Priestley, 

 even of Robert Boyle, having occa- 

 sionally been put forward. The 

 fact that Lavoisier did not suffi- 

 ciently acknowledge j his indebted- 

 ness to some of his English con- 

 temporaries has given occasion in 

 some quarters to depreciation of his 

 merits. It cannot be upheld that 

 he was the first formally to express 

 the doctrine of the indestructibility 

 or conservation of matter, as this 

 idea underlay many experimental 

 researches before his time ; nor 

 that he was the first to refer to 

 the balance as the ultimate test 

 of chemical facts. The assertion 

 that he first introduced the idea 

 of two different kinds of matter, 

 ponderable and imponderable, is 

 also questionable, and still more 

 so his claim to having discovered 

 oxygen, the composition of water 

 and of atmospheric air, the combus- 

 tibility of the diamond, and other 

 special facts. His fame rests upon 

 a much broader basis, and has 

 been most clearly investigated and 

 settled by Hermann Kopp in his 

 ' Entwickelung der Chemie in der 

 neueren Zeit' (Miinchen, 1873). 



In this excellent work the author 

 somewhat modifies the view he 

 took in his earlier ' Geschichte der 

 Chemie' (Braunschweig, 1843, espe- 

 cially vol. i. p. 274, &c.), and sums 

 up Lavoisier's merit in the follow- 

 ing words (p. 145): "His contem- 

 poraries could dispose of the same 

 inherited and much new material, 

 but not one of them understood 

 how to build up out of this material 

 and his own independent researches 

 a chemical system, the reception of 

 which should form the starting- 

 point for all future improvement 

 of this science. Lavoisier has the 

 whole merit of having achieved 

 this. He added to his own recog- 

 nition of the correct views the work 

 of procuring recognition for them 

 from others. He imparted his own 

 matured views to those who repre- 

 sented chemistry at the end of the 

 last century. . . . We must measure 

 his greatness not merely by his 

 own insight but also by the re- 

 sistance which he had to overcome 

 in other chemists who clung t 

 the older theory. These achieve- 

 ments are great enough not to re- 

 quire the exaggeration with which 

 they have occasionally been an- 

 nounced, and not to be touched by 

 attempts on the other side to mini- 

 mise them." 



