698 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



dress is described in " Nature " as having been " a very stirring and 

 noble one, full of sound sense as to the recent humiliation and present 

 condition of France, enthusiasm toward science, and faith in it as 

 one of the most powerful regenerators of the country. " Science is 

 at present supreme," he said ; " she is becoming more and more the 

 sovereign of the world." And he believed that it would be only when 

 all ranks and classes of the people, rulers and ruled, wei'e thoroughly 

 imbued with the scientific spirit and were guided by scentific knowl- 

 ledge that France would ever again take and maintain the supreme 

 place in the world which she ought to hold. 



At the second meeting of this Association, held in August, 1873, 

 at Lyons, M. de Quatrefages was president. In his opening address 

 he pointed out the almost inconceivable advance that science had 

 made during the past century, and the importance of scientific edu- 

 cation. In speaking of the latter subject, he said that the -devotees 

 of literature accused Science of stifling the imagination. " ' She kills,' 

 they say, ' the ideal, and stunts intelligence by imprisoning it within 

 the limits of reality ; she is incompatible with poetry.' The men who 

 speak thus have never read Kepler the astronomer, Linnseus the natu-» 

 ralist, Buffon the zoologist, Humboldt the universal savant. What ! 

 Science stifle sentiment, imagination, she who brings us every hour 

 into the presence of wonders ! She lower intelligence, who touches 

 on all the infinities ! When literary students and poets know Science 

 better, they will come and draw from her living fountain. Like Byron 

 of our time, like Homer of yore, they will borrow from her striking 

 imagery descriptions whose grandeur will be doubled by their truth. 

 Homer was a savant for his time. He knew the geography, the anat- 

 omy of his era ; we find in his verses the names of islands and capes, 

 technical terms like clavicle and scapula. None the less, he wrote the 

 * Iliad.' No, the study of science will never suppress the genius of 

 an inspired poet, of a true painter, of a great sculptor. But she will 

 bring more light to the path of an erring soul. She will, perhaps, 

 transform into a wise man, or at least into a citizen useful to himself 

 and others, one who without her would only have been one of thos6 

 pretended incomprehensible geniuses, designed to perish of misery, of 

 impotency, and of pride. While fully admitting the important placiB 

 of literature in education, he would wish to see children initiated at 

 an early age into the facts, the ideas, and the methods of science. 



" Governments, such as they have hitherto been, have almost al- 

 ways acted as if they had no need for the men who study Nature and 

 her forces. But when any critical or important event occurs, then it 

 is found necessary to appeal to them. Of whom are the juries of inter- 

 national exhibitions composed ? No doubt each state sends its worthy 

 merchants, its tried chiefs of industry, its eminent agriculturists, but 

 it also, and above all, sends its men of science. At these important 

 times peoples are comparing their real strength, and each feels that 



