SCIENCE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CENTURY 



secret," " the salt of many virtues," and the like, 

 have been accepted without protest by the chemical 

 world. With such a terminology continued progress 

 w r as as impossible as human progress without speech. 

 The new chemistry of Lavoisier and his confreres, fol- 

 lowing the model set by zoology half a century earlier, 

 designates each substance by a name instead of a phrase, 

 applies these names according to fixed rules, and ? in 

 short, classifies the chemical knowledge of the time and 

 brings it into a system, lacking which no body of knowl- 

 edge has full title to the name of science. 



Though Lavoisier was not alone in developing this 

 revolutionary scheme, posterity remembers him as its 

 originator. His dazzling and comprehensive genius ob- 

 scured the feebler lights of his confreres. Perhaps, too, 

 his tragic fate was not without influence in augmenting 

 his posthumous fame. In 179i he fell by the guillotine, 

 guiltless of any crime but patriotism a victim of the 

 " Keign of Terror." " The Republic has no need of 

 savants" remarked the functionary who signed the 

 death-warrant of the most famous chemist of the cen- 

 tury. 



The leader of the reform movement in chemistry 

 thus died at the hands of bigotry and fanaticism 

 rather, let us say, as the victim of a national frenzy 

 while the cause he championed was young, yet not too 

 soon to see the victory as good as won. The main body 

 of French chemists had accepted the new doctrines al- 

 most from the first, and elsewhere the opposition had 

 been of that fierce, eager type which soon exhausts itself 

 in the effort. At Berlin they began by burning Lovoi- 

 sier in effigy, but they ended speedily by accepting the 

 new theories. In England the fight was more stubborn, 

 c 33 



