11 



correct does this idea appear to me that I am led, in this con- 

 nection, to refer briefly to the condition of science in Europe in 

 the latter part of the eighteenth and the beginning of the present 

 century, when the first feeble and apparently insignificant attempts 

 were made to rear, in Philadelphia, a temple of the natural 

 sciences. 



To the student of history it is well known that in France, under 

 the administrations of those famous cardinals the far-seeing 

 Richelieu and the astute Mazarin a powerful impulse was given 

 to the highest branches of learning. From the hour that Louis 

 XIV. ascended the throne, however, this impulse began slowly to 

 be arrested by the gradual inauguration of a policy fatal alike to 

 the intellectual and mechanical interests of the country. Mathe- 

 matics, astronomy, the mechanical and inventive arts, anatomy, 

 physiology, theoretical and practical medicine all fell more or 

 less rapidly into decay. With the death of Louis in 1715, the 

 intellectual decadence of France was complete. Her great men, 

 one after another, had passed away, until at last she was without 

 literature, science, and arts. With the appearance of a new order 

 of literary and scientific men, in the middle of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, she began at length to emerge from this stagnant condition. 

 In 1735 Newton's "Treatise on Fluxions" was translated into 

 French by Buffon. Three years later Voltaire made the people 

 of France acquainted with the philosophy of Newton in a manner 

 so clear and forcible as to cause it to supersede that of Descartes. 

 He also gave popularity among his countrymen to the writings 

 of Locke, from which, according to Buckle, Condillac drew the 

 materials of his system of metaphysics, and Rousseau his theoiy 

 of education. In 1749 attention was strongly directed to the 

 stiuby of natural history by the celebrated Buffon, who, in that 

 3'ear, commenced the publication of his famous work on that sub- 

 ject, and in glowing language advocated the unity of the human 

 race, and endeavored to show how climate and other physical 

 conditions influence the geographical distribution of animals. In 

 1751 a popular account of Bacon and his philosophy was con- 

 tributed by D'Alembert to the Encyclopedia. In 1754 Condillac, 

 who Cousin declares was the only metaphysician produced by 

 France in the eighteenth century, published his famous treatise 

 on Sensations. Four years afterward appeared the remarkable 

 essay of Helvetius on the Mind. These works undoubtedly gave 



