i 882.] 
French Reactionism in Science , 
589 
also Newton, and the latter, in addition, was overthrowing the 
work of the great Frenchman Des Cartes. The reformers 
in physics, also, — Clausius, Meyer, Joule, Helmholtz, Rum- 
ford, and Davy, — were none of them natives of France. To 
set aside this supposition we must refer to cases of change 
in which French genius has been largely concerned, and 
which have yet experienced in France an unkindly re- 
ception. 
We take first the inauguration of the so-called “ new 
chemistry,” involving the rejection of dualism, the recogni- 
tion of substitution, and of the doctrine of atomicity. These 
views, with the corresponding changes in notation and no- 
menclature, are all but universally recognised in England, 
Germany, Italy, Russia, and America. An elementary 
treatise which should ignore or rejeft the more recent views 
would in England be useless, since a knowledge of these 
views is obligatory upon all examinees in chemical subjects. 
A paper read before the Chemical Society, in which the 
notation and the theoretical views found, e.g., in the Caven- 
dish Society’s edition of Gmelin’s great work, were employed, 
would be received with amazement almost as blank as if the 
reader were to revert to the language and ideas of the pre- 
Lavoisierian epoch, and to account for phenomena by the 
presence or absence of phlogiston. In Germany it is ex- 
pressly demanded that the language and the symbols (if any) 
employed in the specification of a chemical patent must be 
in accordance with the present state of knowledge. In 
America the nomenclature of the “ new chemistry ” has 
actually found its way into the workshop and the market. 
But in France the state of affairs is altogether different. 
In treatises written by eminent chemists, and in memoirs 
written before the Academy of Sciences and duly printed in 
the “ Comptes Rendus,” we may still find, e.g., the symbol 
for water written HO. 
Now it is certainly true that what is by some authors now 
spoken of as the “ old chemistry,” with its accompanying 
notation and terminology, was to a great extent established 
by Lavoisier and his friends, and was hence for a time even 
called “ la chimie Frangaise.” But, on the other hand, the 
system now in the ascendant owes perhaps more to France 
than to any other country, as we shall admit if we duly esti- 
mate the labours of Dumas, Laurent, Gerhardt, Ampere, 
and others. So that the slow progress, and the very partial 
acceptance of the new chemistry in France cannot be in any 
marked manner traced to national jealousy. 
We come now to a far wider and deeper change in Science 
