INTRODUCTION 7 



Never in the history of Europe had so brilliant a company 

 of scientific men concentrated in one spot the superb 

 productions of their genius. 1 Alexander von Humboldt, 

 contrasting Paris and Berlin at a later period, charac- 

 terized the latter as "an intellectual desert, an insig- 

 nificant city devoid of literary culture." Goethe, too, 

 longed for the intellectual joys of Paris. Writing to 

 Eckermann in 1827, he said: 



"Truth to say, we all lead a miserably isolated existence. 

 We meet with but little sympathy from the common herd 

 around us, and our men of genius are scattered over Germany. 

 One is at Vienna, another at Berlin, a third at Konigsberg, a 

 fourth at Bonn or Diisseldorf - - all separated by some hun- 

 dreds of miles, so that personal intercourse and a viva wee 

 interchange of thought is a matter of rare occurrence. I am 

 vividly impressed with the keen enjoyment this would yield 

 when I am in the company of men like Alexander von Hum- 

 boldt, who in one day carry me farther toward all I am seeking 

 and yearning to know than I could attain during years of 

 solitary study. 



"Only imagine, however, a city like Paris, where the clever- 

 est heads of a great kingdom are grouped together in one spot, 

 and in daily intercourse incite and stimulate each other by 

 mutual emulation; where all that is of most value in the king- 

 doms of nature and art, from every part of the world, is daily 

 open to inspection; and all this in a city where every bridge 

 and square is associated with some great event of the past, 

 and where every street-corner has a page of history to unfold. 

 And withal not the Paris of a dull and stupid age, but the 

 Paris of the nineteenth century, where for three generations 

 such men as Moliere, Voltaire, and Diderot have brought into 

 play a mass of intellectual power such as can never be met 

 with a second time on any single spot in the whole world." 



It would be easy to fill this book with distinguished 

 eulogies of French culture, of the clearness and pre- 



x See the present writer's "National Academies and the Progress of 

 Research," Science, November 14, 1913. 



