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, reflect 

 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 h\?, 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 temporai- 

 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 1 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 



