200 Baron Fourier's Historical Eloge of the 



preme wisdom, it presides from the beginning of time, and 

 renders impossible every kind of disorder. Newton and Euler 

 were not acquainted with all the perfections of the universe. 



Whenever any doubt has been raised respecting the accu- 

 racy, of the Newtonian law, and whenever any foreign cause 

 has been proposed to explain apparent irregularities, the ori- 

 ginal law has always been verified after the most profound ex- 

 amination. The more accurate that astronomical observations 

 have become the more conformable have they been to theory. 

 Of all geometers Laplace is the one who has examined most 

 profoundly these great questions. 



We cannot affirm that it was his destiny to create a science 

 entirely new, like Galileo and Archimedes ; to give to mathe- 

 matical doctrines principles original and of immense extent 

 like Descartes, Newton, and Leibnitz ; or, like Newton, to be the 

 first to transport himself into the heavens, and to extend to all 

 the universe the terrestrial dynamics of Galileo : but Laplace 

 was born to perfect every thing, to exhaust every thing, and to 

 drive back every limit, in order to solve what might have ap- 

 peared incapable of solution. He would have completed the 

 science of the heavens if that science could have been completed. 



The same character appears in his researches on the analy- 

 sis of probabilities, — a science quite modern and of immense ex- 

 tent, whose object, often misunderstood, has given rise to the 

 most erroneous interpretations, but whose application will one 

 day embrace every department of human knowledge — a for- 

 tunate supplement to the imperfection of our nature. 



This art originated from a fine and fertile idea of Pascal's : 

 It was cultivated from its origin by Fermat and Huygens. A 

 philosophical geometer, James Bernouilli, was its principal 

 founder. A singularly happy discovery of Stirling, the re- 

 searches of Euler, and particularly an ingenious and important 

 idea due to Lagrange, have perfected this doctrine : It has 

 been illustrated by the objections even of D'Alembert, and by 

 the philosophical views of Condorcet : Laplace has united and 

 fixed the principles of it. In his hands it has become a new 

 science, submitted to a single analytical method, and of prodi- 

 gious extent. Fertile in useful applications, it will one day 

 throw a brilliant light over ajl the branches of natural philoso- 



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