THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE IN 1894. 701 



ticular si)liere witliiu which it wouhl be prone to confine itself, and in an 

 enhirged expanse it aifords glimpses over the whole domain of thought. 



It is this common life, in Tvhich each of us aims at borrowing from 

 his neighbor his commendable qualities, that made us fond of express- 

 ing ourselves with clearness and logic; this is one of the causes of our 

 originality, and may have been noticed not only among writers but also 

 among scientific men. 



Nor is this all : There is a consensus of opinion that great discoveries 

 or lofty conceptions are stamped with a reflective logic, which keeps 

 imagination within bounds, protects the scientific man from wild 

 hypotheses, the artist and writer from false ])rinciples and errors of 

 taste. This character of high imi>ersonality, of prudent wisdom, whose 

 disregard is one of the failings of our contemporaries, is found to exist 

 in your assembly in a conspicuous degree, for yours is in that respect a 

 privileged assembly. 



Indeed all these investigations conducted by you in every direction 

 and by every method must be harmonious, since they are the result of 

 the same efforts, converge toward the same goal, and express the whole 

 of human thought. By this constant collaboration you are the most 

 vivid light of intellectual life. By its pure and brilliant rays you see 

 the close solidarity of your endeavors ; you constantly have before your 

 eyes the ideal plan under which they are united and utilized for the 

 better advantage of the work in which all the ages of humanity have 

 participated — the progress of civilization. You obtain a better grasp 

 of its main lines, you make more steady progress in the discovery of 

 truth, and, with the assistance of all the noble qualities inherent in 

 national characteristics, you climb with a firm step the luminous heights 

 toward which we are driven by our destiny on earth. 



In fine, while it can not be gainsaid that so great a number of wonder- 

 ful results, of bold doctrines, of sublime conceptions, has stirred to its 

 very depth the mind of our age, and has imparted to the spirit of criti- 

 cism a disquieting acuteness, this is the place where we are to look for 

 a brake and a regulator to api^ly to the wanderings of mysticism and 

 skepticism, of which the one gives all up to rash imagination and the 

 other brings all under barren animadversion. 



"You will preserve for the most ideal manifestations of the mind, for 

 art and for literature, the glorious traditions of the past. 



You will push aside those morbid productions, those arbitrary specu- 

 lations that do not rest on the true reality of nature and of moral life, 

 and which, instead of touching the soul with the spark of enthusiasm, 

 pervade it with delusive bitterness. 



It shall always be your pride that profound good sense, superior 

 logic, which confer on our country its first title to glory in the history 

 of civilization, can be said to be a sacred trust over which the Institute 

 of France watches with pious care. 



In the course of this plenary sitting, a symbol of the effective union 



