Thus, while I thought myself employed only in forming a Nomenclature,
and while I proposed to myself nothing more than to improve the chemical
language, my work transformed itself by degrees, without my being able
to prevent it, into a treatise upon the Elements of Chemistry.
The impossibility of separating the nomenclature of a science from the
science itself, is owing to this, that every branch of physical science
must consist of three things; the series of facts which are the objects
of the science, the ideas which represent these facts, and the words by
which these ideas are expressed. Like three impressions of the same
seal, the word ought to produce the idea, and the idea to be a picture
of the fact. And, as ideas are preserved and communicated by means of
words, it necessarily follows that we cannot improve the language of
any science without at the same time improving the science itself;
neither can we, on the other hand, improve a science, without improving
the language or nomenclature which belongs to it. However certain the
facts of any science may be, and, however just the ideas we may have
formed of these facts, we can only communicate false impressions to
others, while we want words by which these may be properly expressed.
To those who will consider it with attention, the first part of this
treatise will afford frequent proofs of the truth of the above
observations. But as, in the conduct of my work, I have been obliged to
observe an order of arrangement essentially differing from what has been
adopted in any other chemical work yet published, it is proper that I
should explain the motives which have led me to do so.
It is a maxim universally admitted in geometry, and indeed in every
branch of knowledge, that, in the progress of investigation, we should
proceed from known facts to what is unknown. In early infancy, our ideas
spring from our wants; the sensation of want excites the idea of the
object by which it is to be gratified. In this manner, from a series of
sensations, observations, and analyses, a successive train of ideas
arises, so linked together, that an attentive observer may trace back to
a certain point the order and connection of the whole sum of human
knowledge.
When we begin the study of any science, we are in a situation,
respecting that science, similar to that of children; and the course by
which we have to advance is precisely the same which Nature follows in
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