The principle of Lavoisier, or principle of the conservation of mass,
presents itself under two different aspects according to whether mass
is looked upon as the coefficient of the inertia of matter or as the
factor which intervenes in the phenomena of universal attraction, and
particularly in gravitation. We shall see when we treat of these
theories, how we have been led to suppose that inertia depended on
velocity and even on direction. If this conception were exact, the
principle of the invariability of mass would naturally be destroyed.
Considered as a factor of attraction, is mass really indestructible?
A few years ago such a question would have seemed singularly
audacious. And yet the law of Lavoisier is so far from self-evident
that for centuries it escaped the notice of physicists and chemists.
But its great apparent simplicity and its high character of
generality, when enunciated at the end of the eighteenth century,
rapidly gave it such an authority that no one was able to any longer
dispute it unless he desired the reputation of an oddity inclined to
paradoxical ideas.
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