THE 



EDINBURGH NEW 

 PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL. 



Biographical Memoir of M. Rene-Just Ha'uy. By Baron 



CuviER *. 



The history of the sciences presents some periods during which 

 the human mind seems to have taken an extraordinary flight. 

 When long years of quiet studies have accumulated facts and 

 experiments, and when the theories which have hitherto pre- 

 vailed no longer embrace them, the ideas that are formed of na- 

 ture become in some measure incoherent and contradictory: 

 they no longer form a whole, and there is on all hands per- 

 ceived the necessity of a new chain to connect them. A genius 

 then arises, powerful enough to raise himself to points of view, 

 whence he can seize a part of those relations which are sought 

 after. He inspires an unicnown courage in his contemporaries. 

 Each darts with ardour into this domain, where new paths are 

 traced out. Discoveries succeed with increasing rapidity. It 

 might be said^ that the men who have the good fortune to con- 

 nect their name with his belong to a privileged race. Their 

 disciples, those whose youth has been witness to this great move- 

 ment, fancy they see in them superior beings ; and when the 

 time arrives at which they are successively to pay the tribute 

 due to nature, the generation which remains deplores in them a 

 race of heroes which it despairs of ever seeing equalled. 



• Read before the Institute of France. 

 JANUARY — MARCH 1829- I* 



