338 ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF PARIS. 



Leibnitz and Newton ; it makes itself popular in Fontenelle, d'Alembert, Vol- 

 taire. The history I am writing is that of the spirit of the sciences from Bacon 

 and Descartes to our own times. 



Bacon offers us, in his New Atlantis, a perfect image of our academies. In 

 that work there is an institute of Solomon. It is an academy lilvC those of our 

 day. We might think that in the latter we saw the Atlantis of Bacon carried 

 into effect; "the dream of a savant realized," as Fontenelle says in his Eloge 

 of Marsigli. In the institute of Solomon the members are distributed into sec- 

 tions, and each section corresponds to a science. Three members occupy 

 themselves with mechanics, three with physics, three with natural history, &c. ; 

 some travel in foreign countries to bring thence machines, instruments, models, 

 (experiments, and observations of every sort ; there are some whose sole em- 

 ployment is to try new experiments, &c. "The end of our foundation," says 

 one of the members, "is the knowledge of causes and secret motions of things, 

 and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire to the effecting of all things 

 possible." 



Fontenelle paints in his own manner — that is, with expressions of which each 

 has its point and its import — the new spirit which endowed us with academies. 

 "We have abandoned," he says, "a sterile system of physics, which has stood for 

 centuries always at the same point. The reign of Avords and of terms is past ; 

 we seek now for things. Principles are established which we understand. 

 We follow them, and hence we advance. Authority has ceased to have more 

 weight than reason. What was received without contradiction, because it had 

 long been received, is now examined and often rejected ; and as the plan has 

 been adopted of consulting, in reference to natural objects, nature herself rather 

 than the ancients, nature more readily lends herself to discovery, and often, 

 when solicited by new expedients of interrogation, accords to us the knowledge 

 of some one of her secrets." Thus we see the empire of terms is past ; thingx 

 are preferred ; aut/ioritt/ is less consulted than reason; nature more than the 

 ancients ; in a word, we make experiments. 



The ancients did not make experiments, or, at least, they made too few. 

 riiey made them in no sustained, consecutive, unintermittent manner. Had 

 they done so, they would have soon felt the need of academics. As Fontenelle 

 justly says, "the revival of true philosophy rendered academies so necessary 

 ,that they were at once established. That mass of materials which the new 

 aciences — science become experimental — demand, there are no means either of 

 collecting or preparing, except through the instrumentality of associations, and 

 associations protected by the government. Neither the information, nor the 

 c^ire, nor the life, nor the faculties of an individual would suffice for it. There 

 needs too great a number of experiments, too many of different kinds, too many 

 repetitions of those of the same kind ; it is requisite to vary them in too many 

 modes, and to pursue them for too great a length of time in the same spirit." 



Wherever we see the genius of experiment developed, we witness the rise of 

 an academy. The Royal Society of London commences with the experiments 

 of Boyle ; the Academy del Cimcnto is the work of the disciples of Galileo; the 

 Academy of Sciences of Paris was at first Cartesian, and the systems of Des- 

 cartes may have been advei-se to experiment, but his noble method, stronger 

 than his systems, perpetually leads us back to it. Descartes asked of men but 

 two things — leisure and the means of making experiments. " If there were in 

 the world," he says, "some one whom we knew with certainty to be capablo 

 of making the grandest and most useful discoveries, and his fellow-men should 

 exert themselves by every means to aid him in attaining the objects of his 

 research, I see not how they could do aught else for him but defray the ex- 

 pense of th(! experiments which he would have occasion to make, and prevent 

 his leisure from being interrupted by the intrusions of any one." — ( Discours de 

 la nietkodc.J Elsewhere he observes, "the schools seem to me chiefly to have 



