ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF PARIS. 353 



in your hands. The most important j)oint i^, that the Regent has declared 

 that he reserved our sciences to himself aloue. You and 1 will not quarrel 

 about the reports he may require. But, however honorable this distinction 

 may be to our Academy, or flattering to ourselves, I still have a fear that it 

 may expose our poor savants to envy and the ill oiEces which might follow. 

 i fear, moreover, that in the multiplicity of more important affairs with which 

 liis royal Highness is overwhelmed, it will not be possible for him to enter into 

 all our details, whose numbers frighten even yoin-self, and which will hereafter 

 imdoubtedl}^ increase. Tlie example of our dear Acadc7nic J'rancaise alarms 

 lue. From the day that the King condescended to take the title of its Pro- 

 tector, and it had the honor, consequently, of being immediately responsible to 

 none but his Majesty, you know to what extent the spirit of state affairs in- 

 vaded it, and how many evils, or at least inutilities, followed in their train. 

 The Academy would soon be reduced to nothing, if it fell into a condition 

 anything like this. Think of these things, I pray you." 



These particulars are curious ; happily, however, the Abbe was needlessly 

 alarmed. The constitution of the Academy was an excellent one, and there 

 are two things therein Avhich strike me as possessing singular wisdom : one, 

 that it had entire liberty in the domain of the sciences ; the other, that it was 

 absolutely limited to that domain : no function, either of administration, or 

 even of instruction. 



The Academy is no university. The barrier Avhicli separates them should 

 be eternal. Universities teach, the Academy discovers and improves ; this th(- 

 very terms of its device inculcate : Invenlt ct j)cyjidt. Nor has it any more 

 an administrative function. The Academy seeks, as it ought to seek, in every- 

 thing, ideal excellence ; administration aims only at practicable excellence. 

 8olon gave to the Athenians, not the best possible laws, but such only as they 

 could bear. 



The numerous editions of the Elogcs which have appeared since the death of 

 their author are more or less infected with verbal errors. In one we read : 

 '• Two or three great geniuses suiBce to advance theories very far in a short 

 time, but practice demands greater sloAvness, because it depends on too many 

 hands, most of which are j^l^s habilcs.'" liQadpcu/iahihs, i. c. little qualified. 

 Again : " Father Malebranche had taken little pains to cultivate the faculty 

 of imagination ; on the contrary, he was very prone to decry it ; but he had that 

 faculty in a very high and vivid degree, though it labored for an ingrate in 

 s])ite of himself, and directed (nrdonnait) reason while it hid itself from her." 

 Kead emhelUshed (ornalt) reason. In an edition of Fontenelle printed at the. 

 close of the last century, the word Monsieur, or its substitute the capital M.. 

 has been suppressed before the name of every personage; so that Fontenelle. 

 the most scrupulous observer of all proprieties, is made to call M. de Pontchar- 

 train simply Pontchar train, or the Chancellor ; the Minister M. de Maurepas. 

 Maurepas, &c., &c. He had said : M. Tournefort, ]M. Leibnitz, M. Newton, 

 &c.; the editor makes him say : Tournefort, Leibnitz, Neictem, Bossuet, Col- 

 hert, Louvois, &c. In the Eloge of Sauveur we find : " One thing determined 

 Sauveur to follow the sage counsel of Condom ;" Condom being the great 

 Bossuet, then dead but a few years. This sort of anachronism changes the 

 whole physiognomy of the book. 



Bosnage thus portrays Fontenelle : " Some pretend that mathematics dis- 

 tort and impoverish the mind ; M. de Fontenelle might with reason serve to 

 refute this disparaging idea in regard to mathematicians ; he carries not into 

 the world that absent and dreamy air imputed to geometers ; he speaks not as 

 a savant who knows nothing beyond the terms of his art. The system of tlie 

 world, Avhich had been, for any one else, the groundwork of a dogmatical dis- 

 sertation, not to be understood without the help of a dictionary, becomes, in 

 his hands, an agreeable pleasantry, and the reader who dreamed only of being 

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