663 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the greatest masters of language ; M. Dumas still pursues his valuable 

 researches in chemical science, and he combines with them an eloquence 

 and elegance in literary composition not unworthy of his scientific re- 

 nown ; M. Pasteur has carried to their farthest limit the investigations 

 of physiology, and has rendered incalculable services to mankind by 

 tracing to their sources the germs of life, and of the diseases which 

 affect life ; M. Taine must be placed among the best French writers 

 left to us since the extinction of the great historians, critics, and ora- 

 tors of the last generation. By a fortunate accident three of these 

 eminent persons were called upon to take part on two memorable occa- 

 sions beneath the dome devoted to the public sittings of the French 

 Institute. That building, dedicated to letters, to science, to art, and 

 to criticism, may be regarded as the last refuge and asylum of the 

 genius and culture of France. It has resounded for two centuries to 

 the voices of the great leaders of thought and eloquence of former 

 generations ; it still collects within its walls whatever is best and no- 

 blest in French society. This institution alone survives the great cata- 

 clysm which has swept away thrones, and churches, and orders, and 

 constitutional government. The National Institute, and especially the 

 oldest branch of it, the French Academy, still pursues its calm and dig- 

 nified course, unshaken by despotism, by sedition, by popular tumults, 

 by the violence of war, or by the scourge of revolution. Even during 

 the siege of Paris we believe that its sittings were scarcely interrupted. 

 Beneath the customary forms of academic compliments, which are in 

 themselves idle ceremonies, it is not difficult to trace in its proceedings 

 the language of earnest thought and warm feeling ; and we shall have 

 occasion to show that the great conflict of the age between faith and 

 science, between the intellect and the senses, between spiritualism and 

 materialism, between mind and matter, between the finite and the infi- 

 nite, was the real subject of the discourses delivered on the occasions 

 to which we now particularly refer. 



But there was in this encounter a peculiar contrast. M. Littre, to 

 whose memory the speech of M. Pasteur was devoted, was himself a 

 Comtist ; his philosophy was entirely negative ; he denied everything 

 which could not be brought within the evidence of the senses. These 

 agnostic opinions were strenuously assailed by the eminent man of 

 science whose duty it was to relate the touching history of his life. 

 M. Taine, who had been elected to the Academy two years before in 

 the place of M. de Lomenie, disclaimed all adherence to Comtism, and 

 spoke with very little respect of its founder, but his language was not 

 less skeptical ; it was a distant echo of the philosophy of the eighteenth 

 century, which destroyed all beliefs and planted nothing in their place ; 

 it was an avowal of the supremacy of matter over mind, which is char- 

 acteristic of ail his own writings. To him M. Dumas replied with 

 great force and point. The great chemist told him that all the re- 

 searches of the present generation into the secrets of the material 



