Biography of Berzelius. 213 



so considerable. A French philosopher exchanged the sym- 

 bols proposed by Berzelius, for the initial letters of the 

 French names for the elements. But it was in England that 

 the greatest opposition was made to the adoption of the 

 chemical formulae of Berzelius. Even so late as 1822, an 

 English chemist, speaking of them, said, " they are calculated 

 more to produce misunderstanding and mystification than 

 clearness, since they are of a nature totally different from 

 algebraical formulae ; it would be easier to express oneself 

 in ordinary words than with these symbols, which only make 

 a kind of mathematical parade." Berzelius replied to the 

 partly rude and uncourteous objections with dispassionate 

 clearness and composure. Who would now consider it pos- 

 sible to dispense with the use of these " abominable sym- 

 bols" of Berzelius, as they were termed by the editor of an 

 English journal ? The opposition to the introduction of these 

 symbols was the more remarkable, since Dalton, in putting 

 forward his atomic system in 1808, had felt the urgent 

 necessity of representing the atoms of elements by means 

 of symbols, which did not then meet with any opposition, 

 although at the same time with no imitation in England. 

 The symbols of Dalton are, however, far less appropriate 

 than those of Berzelius ; moreover they sufficed only to ex- 

 press simple combinations, and not very complicated ones. 

 The introduction of Berzelius' symbols first enabled the 

 chemist to construct chemical formulas. 



When Berzelius began to prove the law of chemical 

 proportions by experiment, he was so firmly convinced that 

 in inorganic bodies only the most simple relations obtained, 

 that he even doubted the accuracy of his own experiments, 

 when their results gave complicated relations. It was 

 long before he could allow himself to admit that simple sub- 

 stances could combine with three, five, and seven atoms of 

 oxygen, because these numbers were not multiples of each 

 other. He therefore assumed, that in phosphoric acid there 

 were four atoms of oxygen, in the arsenious and arsenic acid 

 four and six atoms, and in oxide of antimony and antimonic 

 acid the same number ; and long after he had convinced 

 himself of the elementary nature of chlorine, he doubted the 



