THE VALUE OF SCIENCE 281 



the stars, some bold spirits might perhaps have sought to foresee 

 physical phenomena; but their failures would have been frequent, 

 and they would have excited only the derision of the vulgar; do we 

 not see, that even in our day the meteorologists sometimes deceive 

 themselves, and that certain persons are inclined to laugh at them. 



How often would the physicist, disheartened by so many checks, 

 have fallen into discouragement, if they had not had, to sustain their 

 confidence, the brilliant example of the success of the astronomers ! 

 This success showed them that nature obeys laws; it only remained 

 to know what laws; for that they only needed patience, and they 

 had the right to demand that the sceptics should give them credit. 



This is not all: astronomy has not only taught us that there are 

 laws, but that from these laws there is no escape, that with them there 

 is no possible compromise. How much time should we have needed 

 to comprehend that fact, if we had known only the terrestrial world, 

 where each elemental force would always seem to us in conflict with 

 other forces? Astronomy has taught us that the laws are infinitely 

 precise, and that if those we enunciate are approximative, it is be- 

 cause we do not know them well. Aristotle, the most scientific mind 

 of antiquity, still accorded a part to accident, to chance, and seemed 

 to think that the laws of nature, at least here below, determine only 

 the large features of phenomena. How much has the ever-increasing 

 precision of astronomical predictions contributed to correct such an 

 error, which would have rendered nature unintelligible! 



But are these laws not local, varying in different places, like those 

 which men make; does not that which is truth in one corner of the 

 universe, on our globe for instance, or in our little solar system, be- 

 come error a little farther away? And then could it not be asked 

 whether laws depending on space do not also depend upon time, 

 whether they are not simple habitudes, transitory, therefore, and 

 ephemeral? Again it is astronomy that answers this question. Con- 

 sider the double stars; all describe conies; thus, as far as the tele- 

 scope carries, it does not reach the limits of the domain which obeys 

 Newton's law. 



Even the simplicity of this law is a lesson for us; how many com- 

 plicated phenomena are contained in the two lines of its enunciation; 

 persons who do not understand celestial mechanics may form some 

 idea of it at least from the size of the treatises devoted to this science; 

 and then it may be hoped that the complication of physical phenomena 

 likewise hides from us some simple cause still unknown. 



It is therefore astronomy which has shown us what are the general 

 characteristics of natural laws; but among these characteristics there 

 is one, the most subtile and the most important of all, which I shall 

 ask leave to stress. 



