THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE IN 1894. 699 



wliicli iiji to tliat time seemed to be of a purely' matliematieal nature? 

 ^/Vbo could Lave imagined that astronomers were to lind in pliotograpliy 

 and spectroscopy their most j^owerfiil means of investigation; that 

 by analyzing with their aid the luminous rays, the only messengers 

 through whom we are in direct communication with the stars, we 

 could arrive at positive conclusions in regard to the physical condition 

 of the celestial bodies, the distance which separates them from us, 

 their rotation, their nascent state, the present i^eriod of their stellar 

 life, and their wane? What a triumph for natural philosophy to be 

 able to assert that the innumerable bodies in the canopy of heaven con- 

 tain the same material elements as our globe! 



In ascertaining the truly marvelous fact that a single luminous wave 

 sprung from a star is enough to convey such intimate and varied 

 knowledge, we can not help being seized with profound admiration for 

 the sublime arrangement which holds and unites all things together in 

 a perfect and inseparable whole. And this communication, no less sur- 

 jjrising than accurate, which modern science has succeeded in estab- 

 lishing with the most remote of the heavenly worlds, inspires us with 

 confidence in the constantly progressive advance of human intellectual 

 power. 



Unforeseen prospects are again spread out before us. We may already 

 dimly perceive the solution of the momentous problems relative to the 

 medium and to the mode of transmission of i)hysical forces. It may also 

 be that we are nearer than we think to acquiring precise notions of 

 that primordial substance from which come all those elementary bodies 

 that constitute the material Universe. 



We are thus led to the extreme boundaries of the knowable, to the 

 threshold of the great mysteries which it seems human curiosity will 

 never be allowed to penetrate. As was said by one of the greatest think- 

 ers that have honored our comprny, Ernest Kenan, " it is here that our 

 reason collapses; that all science stands still; that analogy is dumb. 

 The antinomies of Kant, an insuperable barrier, loom before us." 



This enigmatic unity of origin of all the substances that fill space 

 would at once explain the connection shown by study to exist among 

 the phenomena that seem to be most independent, and the inevitable 

 concatenation of all the sciences whose subject is nature. 



But instances of so deep an interpenetration are not found in the 

 physical sciences alone. The close relations to one another of all the 

 operations of the mind become every day more apparent and numerous. 

 As we now know, the necessary preparation for successful application 

 to historical and archaeological studies comprise a knowledge of the cli- 

 mate, of the structure, and successive evolutions of the soil on which 

 the human races have developed, and all the traces that these races 

 have left behind on their passage must be rigidly investigated. 



The necessity of universal knowledge asserts itself on every occasion. 

 It was again evidenced in one of our quarterly meetings, when one of 



