One Succeeds In Obtaining An Equivalent Production

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.

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.

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.

This Theory [the Oxygen Theory] Is Not As I Have Heard It Described, That Of The French Chemists, It Is Mine (elle Est La Mienne); It Is A Property Which I Claim From My Contemporaries And From Posterity.

I Am Young And Avid For Glory.