M. Arago''s Historical Eloge of Joseph Fourier. 5 



they shew in an admirable manner the immense progress which 

 France has made in the last forty years. Our descendants 

 will see in them, not the excuse, but tlie explanation of some of 

 the sanguinary disorders which stained our first revolution. 



Fourier, not having been allowed to gird on the sword, took 

 the habit of a Benedictine, and retired to tha abbey of Saint 

 Bc7ioii'Sur-Loir, where he was to perform his noviciate. He 

 had not yet pronounced the vows, v/hen, in 1T89, delightful 

 and seductive ideas on the social regeneration of France seized 

 on all minds. Fourier immediately renounced the ecclesiasti- 

 cal career ; but this circumstance did not prevent his former 

 masters from intrusting him with the principal chair of Mathe- 

 matics at the military school of Auxerre, and lavishing on him 

 marks of lively and sincere affection. I may venture to say 

 that no circumstance in the life of our fellow member shews 

 more clearly the goodness of his disposition and the suavity of 

 his manners. We must be unacquainted with the human heart, 

 to suppose that the monks of Saint-Benoit did not feel some 

 displeasure at seeing themselves abandoned so abruptly ; or to 

 imagine, above all, that they renounced, v/ithout lively regret, 

 the glory which the order might expect from the ingenious fel- 

 low-labourer who was leaving them. 



Fourier made a worthy return for the confidence of which he 

 had just been the object. When his colleagues were unwell, 

 the titular professor of Mathematics filled by turns the chairs 

 of Rhetoric, History, and Philosophy ; and, whatever was the 

 subject of his lectures, he dealt out with an unsparing hand, to 

 an audience who listened to him with delight, the treasures of 

 a varied and profound knowledge, adorned with all the orna- 

 ment which the most elegant language could give them. " 



At the close of 1789, Fourier went to Paris, and read before 

 the Academy of Sciences, a memoir on the solution of numerical 

 equations of all degrees. This, his first youthful work, was, so to 

 speak, never lost sight of by our fellow member. He explained 

 it at Paris, to the pupils of the Polytechnic School ; he deve- 

 loped it on the banks of the Nile before the Institute of Egypt ; 

 at Grenoble, from the year 1802, it was the favourite subject 

 of his discussions with the Professors of the Central School, or 



