SCIENCE UNDER NAPOLEON 9 



disturbance and unrest which leave little opportunity for the 

 quiet and repose essential to the cultivation of science. These 

 he carefully distinguished, however, from great upheavals of 

 the body politic. " When a violent revolution occurs among 

 a highly civilized people, it cannot fail to give a sudden impulse 

 to feeling and imagination." Thus, he pointed out, the French 

 achieved their highest development in science soon after the 

 revolution of 1789. 



In 1863, when the National Academy of Sciences was in- 

 corporated, de Tocqueville would probably have considered our 

 intellectual dependence upon England to be materially less than 

 at the time of his visit to the United States, thirty years earlier. 

 Doubtless he would have attributed the improved condition of 

 American science to the effect of the Civil War, and the con- 

 siderable increase in wealth and leisure. In 1873, if we may 

 judge from Tyndall's remarks in the concluding lecture of his 

 American series, European opinion saw hope for the future of 

 science in the United States, but recognized few important ac- 

 complishments. "If great scientific results are not achieved 

 in America, it is not to the small agitations of society that I 

 should be disposed to ascribe the defect, but to the fact that 

 the men among you who possess the endowments necessary 

 for profound scientific inquiry are laden with duties of ad- 

 ministration, so heavy as to be utterly incompatible with the 

 continuous and tranquil meditation which original investiga- 

 tion demands." At this time Henry was secretary of the 

 Smithsonian Institution, Barnard was president of Columbia 

 College, and Rogers was president of the Massachusetts In- 

 stitute of Technology. There was thus some justification for 

 Tyndall's remark, though the amount of scientific research in 

 progress was much larger than one would infer from his state- 

 ment of the case. Moreover, though deprived by other duties 

 of the privilege of personal work in the laboratory, these very 

 men, charter members of the National Academy, had assisted 

 in laying the foundations of science in America. 



One of the most striking pen portraits of President Lincoln 



