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252 Dr. Hareon the Chemical Nomenclature of Berzelius. 
when so much stress is laid upon the idea of a salt, the impossi- 
bility of defining the meaning of the word escapes attention. 
How is a salt to be distinguished from any other binary com- 
pound? When the discordant group of substances which have 
been enumerated under this name, 1s contemplated, is it not evi- 
dent that no definition of them can be founded on community of 
properties? and, by the advocates of the new doctrine, composition 
has been made the object of definition, instead of being the basis. 
Thus, agreeably to them, a compound is not a salt, because it is 
made of certain elements; but, on the contrary, an element, 
whether simple or compound, belongs to the class of salt radicals, 
because it produces a salt. Since sulphur, with four atoms of 
oxygen, SO*, produces a salt with a metal, it must be deemed a 
salt radical.” 
30. E'vidently the word salt has been so used, or rather so 
abused, that it is impossible to define tt, either by a resort to prop- 
erties or composition ; and I conceive, therefore, that to make it a 
ground of abandoning terms which are susceptible of definition, 
and which have long been tacitly used by chemists in general, in 
obedience to such definition, would be a retrograde movement in 
science.” 
On perusing the preceding passages, you must perceive that 
the difference between us, is not, that while you would build 
upon one idea of a salt, I would build upon another ; it lies, on 
my part, in the rejection, as a basis of nomenclature or classifica- 
tion, of a word, so vaguely used, and so undefinable as that in 
question. 
As respects another misapprehension, it never occurred to me, 
that binary haloid compounds, were less entitled to be considered 
as salts, on account of their having no more than two elements. 
The tendency of my opinions has been to consider the chloride of 
sodium, as the basis of the saline genus, and to object to the 
treatment of any body asa salt, which has not some analogy with 
it in properties, if not in composition. 
The feature in your nomenclature and classification which is 
most discordant with that which I have proposed, is the distine- 
tion which you have attempted to make between the binary 
compounds formed by halogen bodies with electro-positive radi- 
cals, and those formed with the same radicals by amphigen 
bodies. Icannot conceive upon what ground the former, for the 
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