nalysis adopted by its justly celebrated Author. Should the
public call for a second edition, every care shall be taken to correct
the forced imperfections of the present translation, and to improve the
work by valuable additional matter from other authors of reputation in
the several subjects treated of.

EDINBURGH, }
Oct. 23. 1789. }

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Translator has since been enabled, by the kind assistance of the
gentleman above alluded to, to give Tables, of the same nature with
those of Mr Lavoisier, for facilitating the calculations of the results
of chemical experiments.

PREFACE OF THE AUTHOR.

When I began the following Work, my only object was to extend and
explain more fully the Memoir which I read at the public meeting of the
Academy of Sciences in the month of April 1787, on the necessity of
reforming and completing the Nomenclature of Chemistry. While engaged in
this employment, I perceived, better than I had ever done before, the
justice of the following maxims of the Abbe de Condillac, in his System
of Logic, and some other of his works.

"We think only through the medium of words.--Languages are true
analytical methods.--Algebra, which is adapted to its purpose in every
species of expression, in the most simple, most exact, and best manner
possible, is at the same time a language and an analytical method.--The
art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged."

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 w