164 EULOGY ON GAY-LUSSAC. 



cessity of confining their explanations simply to the scientific produc- 

 tions which have been submitted to the public, and of remaining silent 

 about those with which, according to their judgment, the scientist 

 should have enriched the world. It is almost preaching ingratitude to 

 posterity. 



I should add that the illustrious savants, whose opinions on a special 

 point I have thought it my duty to combat, would likewise like to limit 

 these biographies to purely technical analysis; they would discard 

 everything which concerns the sentiments of the man and the citizen. 

 They allege that details of private life (they call them anecdotes, with 

 a desire to stigmatize them with absolute censure) ought not to be pre- 

 served in our academic archives. When, without pretending to show, 

 as might reasonably be done, any comparison between the productions 

 of the early secretaries and my own humble biographies, I reminded 

 these aristarchs of the very interesting portraitures contained in the 

 admirable eulogies- of Fontenelle and Condorcet, they replied that 

 everything is good in its time, that the progress of knowledge has ren- 

 dered the modifications they demand indispensable. I do not share 

 these opinions, notwithstanding the respect due the savants who com- 

 mend them. 



I regard as an essential part of the mission I have to fulfill an inves- 

 tigation into whether the associates whom we have had the misfortune 

 to lose have caused the worship of science and that of integrity to 

 keep pace with each other; whether they have, as the poet expresses it, 

 allied fine talents to a fine character. Nevertheless, in such matters 

 the public is the only competent judge; I will wait until it has made 

 known its sovereign decision, and unreservedly yield obedience to it. 



GAY-LUSSAC AS PROFESSOR — HIS LABORATORY — HIS WOUNDS— SIM- 

 PLICITY OF HIS MANNERS. 



I am going, therefore, without further explanation, to take the liberty 

 of introducing you into those amphitheaters where our colleague de- 

 lighted with his eloquence a large and brilliant audience. We will then 

 pass into his laboratory ; I will even collect various anecdotes, (you see 

 I do not hesitate to use the word,) from which an estimate may be 

 formed, from a new point of view, of the full extent of the loss which 

 the academy has sustained. 



In a discussion among the learned to decide whether a treatise on the 

 world was or was not by Aristotle, Daniel Heinsius decided in the 

 negative, and the following is his principal argument : " The treatise in 

 question presents uone of that majestic obscurity which, in the works 

 of Aristotle, repels the ignorant." 



Gay-Lussac would assuredly never have obtained encomiums from 

 the Dutch philologist, for he always approached his object by paths the 

 most direct, the most distinct, and with the least parade. 



Gay-Lussac, on all occasions, showed his profound dislike for those 

 ostentatious phrases into which his first titular professor, notwithstand- 



