ACADEMY OP SCIENCES OF PARIS. 339 



erred in this ; that thoy have occupied themselves more in the speculative 

 search for terms to be employed in treating of things than in the search for the 

 truth of the things themselves, by means of good experiments ; hence, they are 

 poor in the latter and rich in the former." 



" Up to this time," says the Cartesian Fontenelle, "the Academy of Sciences 

 only considers nature in small poi'tions. No general system, for fear of falling 

 into the inconvenience of precipitate systems, in which the impatience of the 

 human mind is too prone to take refuge, and which, once established, 

 oppose the reception of new truths. To-day we assure ourselves of a fact ; 

 to-morrow of another which has no relation to it. True, wc do not shun the 

 hazarding of conjectures respecting causes ; but these are only conjectures." 



Claude Perrault, a man of genius in more than one line, and perhaps a more 

 practical savant than Fontenelle, in the preface to the excellent memoirs which, 

 in company with Duverney, he has given us on the anatomy of animah, speaks 

 the same language with Fontenelle respecting the rising spirit of the Academy, 

 "What most entitles the memoirs of the Academy to consideration is the irre- 

 proachable testimony of their assured and recognized verity. For they are not 

 the work of an individual who may readily allow himself to be biased by hi.s 

 opinion; Avho does not easily perceive anything but what confirms the first 

 thoughts he has entertained, and for which he has all the blindness and the 

 complacency with which one regards his own views. These inconveniences 

 cannot be incident to the memoirs in question, for they contain no facts which 

 have not been verified by a whole company, composed of persons who have 

 eyes for seeing these kinds of objects otherwise than the greater part of man- 

 kind see them, just as they have hands for handling them with more dexterity 

 and success ; who see Avell what is, and could with difficulty be brought to see 

 what is not; Avho study not so much to discover novelties as to examine 

 thoroughly what is alleged to have been discovered, and to whom even the 

 assurance of having been deceived carries scarcely less satisfaction than a 

 curious and important discovery. So much, in their minds, does the love of 

 certainty prevail over everything else." * 



The spirit, then, of the Academy of Sciences of Paris has been always the 

 spirit of experiment, of direct study, of precise observation, the loce of certainty. 

 At first Cartesian, it afterwards became Newtonian ; but whether with Descartes 

 ©r NcAvtou, or since Newton and Descartes, it has been always devoted to ex- 

 periment. To write its history is to write the history of the experimental 

 method. 



I return to the first establishment of the Academy. I say iXiaJirsf, for there 

 have, in fact, been two — that of 1GG6, and that of 1G99. " The Royal Academy 

 of Sciences," says Fontenelle, "had, by its labors and its discoveries, so well 

 answered the intentions of the King, that, many years after its establishment, 

 his Majesty was pleased to honor it with a new degree of attention, and to 

 confer upon it a second organization, still more noble, and, so to speak, still 

 more energetic than the first." 



It is a circumstance worthy of note, though it has been but little remarked, that 

 the idea was at first entertained of creating in 1GG6, not a simple academy of 



* Jlistoire dc V Academic des Sciences, (Memoires pour servir a VHixtoirc iiaturelle des 

 animaux, preface, p. VII.) Another testimony to the spirit of the Acadcmi/, comprising a 

 judicious estimate of the spirit of Descartes, (that spirit whicli manifested its experimental 

 tendency in spite of systems, ) is that of Mairan, in his Elogc of Pourfour du Petit. "It was 

 to the Academy that ho recuried, not in quest of Cartesianisni, but of the spirit of Descartes, 

 the love of experiments, and all the ardor which that philosopher evinced in availing himself 

 of their help ; the spirit, in a word, of doubt and of discussion which characterizes his im- 

 mortal method no less than it does the Academy ; or rather it was there that ho saw Descartes 

 preferred by some, Newton by others, and still oftencr Descartes associated with Newton, 

 with Leibnitz, with Aristotle himself, and with all the great minds whose meditations and 

 labors have emiched the human intellect with new acquisitions." 



