[1065] As to the supposed impossibility of conceiving the existence of matter without properties which give rise to forces (note in Paget's Lectures on Pathology, 1853, vol. i. p. 61), there are two reasons which prevent me from attaching much weight to it. First, a conception which, in one stage of knowledge, is called impossible, becomes, in a later stage, perfectly easy, and so natural as to be often termed necessary. Secondly, however indissoluble the connexion may appear between force and matter, it was not found fatal to the dynamical theory of Leibnitz; it has not prevented other eminent thinkers from holding similar views; and the arguments of Berkeley, though constantly attacked, have never been refuted.
[1066] Every chemical decomposition being only a new form of composition. Robin et Verdeil, Chimie Anatomique, vol. i. pp. 455, 456, 498: ‘de tout cela il résulte, que la dissolution est un cas particulier des combinaisons.’
[1067] What is erroneously called the atomic theory, is, properly speaking, an hypothesis, and not a theory: but hypothesis though it be, it is by its aid that we wield the doctrine of definite proportions, the corner stone of chemistry.
[1068] Many of them being still fettered, in geology, by the hypothesis of catastrophes; in chemistry, by the hypothesis of vital forces.
[1069] See, for instance, Cuvier, Progrès des Sciences, vol. i. pp. 32–34, 40; Liebig's Letters on Chemistry, p. 282; Turner's Chemistry, vol. i. pp. 184, 185; Brande's Chemistry, vol. i. pp. lxxxv.–lxxxix. 302; Thomson's Animal Chemistry, pp. 520, 634, and a great part of the second volume of his History of Chemistry; also Müller's Physiol. vol. i. pp. 90, 323.
[1070] According to Mr. Harcourt (Brit. Assoc. Report for 1839, p. 10), Cavendish has this merit, so far as England is concerned: ‘He, first of all his contemporaries, did justice to the rival theory recently proposed by Lavoisier.’
[1071] La chimie française. Thomson's Hist. of Chemistry, vol. ii. pp. 101, 130. On the excitement caused by Lavoisier's views, see a letter which Jefferson wrote in Paris, in 1789, printed partly in Tucker's Life of Jefferson, vol. i. pp. 314, 315; and at length in Jefferson's Correspond. vol. ii. pp. 453–455.
[1072] ‘The first attempt to form a systematic chemical nomenclature was made by Lavoisier, Berthollet, G. de Morveau, and Fourcroy, soon after the discovery of oxygen gas.’ Turner's Chemistry, vol. i. p. 127. Cuvier (Progrès des Sciences, vol. i. p. 39) and Robin et Verdeil (Chimie Anatomique, vol. i. pp. 602, 603) ascribe the chief merit to De Morveau. Thomson says (Hist. of Chemistry, vol. ii. p. 133): ‘This new nomenclature very soon made its way into every part of Europe, and became the common language of chemists, in spite of the prejudices entertained against it, and the opposition which it every where met with.’
[1073] The famous central heat of Buffon is often supposed to have been taken from Leibnitz; but, though vaguely taught by the ancients, the real founder of the doctrine appears to have been Descartes. See Bordas Demoulin, Cartésianisme, Paris, 1843, vol. i. p. 312. There is an unsatisfactory note on this in Prichard's Physical Hist. vol. i. p. 100. Compare Experimental Hist. of Cold, tit. 17, in Boyle's Works, vol. ii. p. 308; Brewster's Life of Newton, vol. ii. p. 100. On the central heat of the Pythagoreans, see Tennemann, Gesch. der Philos. vol. i. p. 149; and as to the central fire mentioned in the so-called Oracles of Zoroaster, see Beausobre, Hist. de Manichée, vol. ii. p. 152. But the complete ignorance of the ancients respecting geology made these views nothing but guesses. Compare some sensible remarks in Matter's Hist. de l'Ecole d'Alexandrie, vol. ii. p. 282.
[1074] This comprehensiveness of Cuvier is justly remarked by M. Flourens as the leading characteristic of his mind. Flourens, Hist. des Travaux de Cuvier, pp. 76, 142, 306: ‘ce qui caractérise partout M. Cuvier, c'est l'esprit vaste.’