[3] He went to Paris in 1870 to study at Lycée Fontanes, where his classmates included Rodolphe Darzens, Pierre Quillard, Stuart Merrill, André-Ferdinand Hérold, André Fontainas, and Éphraïm Mikhaël.

According to Joseph Acquisto of the University of Pennsylvania, Ghil worked towards developing an ideal poetic language that would "subsume and supersede all the other arts", by establishing his own system of verbal instrumentation.

[8] Ghil's theory was intended to support scientific poetry, which included inert matter, atomic-level concepts, human knowledge, and ways of attaining wisdom.

[9] This system established relations among vowels, consonants, colours, music (orchestra), and emotions, which he expanded in a style through versions of the Traité du Verbe.

[10] After his estrangement from his mentor in 1888,[9] Ghil continued to work relentlessly on his own school of instrumentalism, a philosophico-aesthetic system in reaction to the Decadent Movement and Symbolism, which were prevalent in the late 19th-century.

According to French literary critics Jean-Pierre Bobillot and Jean-Nicolas Illouz, Ghil's work is highly accomplished, uncompromising, of singular thought, and mature, and deserves to be read today for its insights on poetry, knowledge and the public thing.