M. Arago's Historical Eloge cf Joseph Fourier. 225 



Fourier competed, and his essay was successful. But, alas ! 

 as Fontenelle said, " even in the region of demonstration 

 there is room for a division of opinion." Some restrictions 

 were mingled with the favourable judgment of the Academy. 

 The committee for awarding the prize, Laplace, Lagrange, 

 and Legendre, whilst they admitted the novelty and import- 

 ance of the subject, and declared that the true differential 

 equations of the propagation of heat were at last discovered, 

 Said that they perceived difficulties in the method by which the 

 author arrived at his conclusion. They added that there was 

 something awanting in his methods of integration, even on the 

 score of accuracy, although they did not support their opinion 

 by any kind of illustration. 



Fourier never yielded to this judgment. At the close of his 

 life, he even shewed in a very marked manner that he thought 

 it unjust, as he printed his prize-essay in our volumes without 

 changing a single word of it. Nevertheless, the doubts ex- 

 pressed by the committee of the Academy continually recurred 

 to his memory. Even at first, they had embittered the pleasure 

 of his triumph. These first impressions joined to great suscep- 

 tibility, explain why Fourier, in the end, looked with a certain 

 degree of displeasure on the efforts of the geometricians who 

 attempted to perfect his theory. This, gentlemen, is a very 

 strange aberration in so elevated a mind. Our colleague must 

 have forgotten that it does not fall to the lot of any one indi- 

 vidual to perfect any scientific question, and that the great 

 works on the system of the world, by the d'Alemberts, the 

 Clairauts, the Eulers, the Lagranges, and the Laplaces, whilst 

 they immortalized their authors, have continued to add fresh 

 lustre to the imperishable glory of Newton. 



Let not this example be lost on us. Since the law of the land 

 imposes on the tribunals the necessity of giving the reasons for 

 their decisions, academies, which are the tribunals of science, 

 can have no possible pretext for dispensing with this regula- 

 tion. At all periods, public bodies, as well as individuals, act 

 wisely, when they trust in all matters to the authority of reason 

 alone. 



The mathematical theory of heat would, at all times, have 



