298 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



55. 



Work of 

 the three 

 nations 

 compared. 



has been seriously discussed, 1 when the British 

 Association has been copied abroad, 2 and when scientific 

 men of eminence are joined in conference as to the advis- 

 ability of founding a professorial university in London, 

 in imitation of the great University of Berlin, it seems 

 appropriate to recall the various ways and means by 

 which, mainly in this century, the exact spirit of re- 

 search, the mathematical method of investigating nature 

 and reality, has been established and diffused. 



France was the country in which the modern scientific 

 methods of measurement, calculation, and classification 

 were first practised on a large scale, reduced to a system, 

 and employed for the investigation of the whole of nature. 

 The Academy of Sciences, together with the High Schools 

 of Science, the Natural History collections, and Medical 

 Institutions, all in close connection, furnished an organi- 

 sation of the highest intelligences of the nation, by which 



1 See Matthew Arnold's essay on 

 ' The Literary Influence of Acad- 

 emies,' and Du Bois - Reymond, 

 ' Uebereine Kaiserliche Akademie 

 der deutschen Sprache,' 1874, re- 

 printed in 'Reden, &c.,' Leipzig, 

 1886, vol. i. p. 141, &c. On the other 

 side see Huxley in ' Critiques and 

 Addresses,' ed. of 1890, p. 113, &c. 



2 The British Association, itself 

 established somewhat on the model 

 of the German ' ' Naturf orscher- 

 Versammlung," founded by Oken 

 and Humboldt (see supra, p. 238) 

 in the year 1831, has become the 

 model of the younger "Associa- 

 tion francaise pour 1'Avancement 

 des Sciences," founded in 1872 

 under the presidency of Claude 

 Bernard. It held its first public 

 meeting at Bordeaux in 1874. In 

 the opening addresses of the presi- 

 dent, M. de Quatrefages, and the 



secretary, M. Cornu, the elder sis- 

 ter in England is referred to. A 

 characteristic passage in M. Quatre- 

 fages' address as regards the results 

 achieved by the British Association 

 is the following : " Grace a elle 

 une partie de la population a <5te 

 transformed. Les fils de c'es chas- 

 seurs de renards, qui, pour se 

 de"lasser de leurs rudes passetemps, 

 ne connaissaient que des joies 

 e"galement violentes et materielles, 

 sont aujourd'hui des botanistes, 

 des ge"ologues, des physiciens, des 

 arche"ologues " ('Comptes Rendus,' 

 lere session, p. 40). Following 

 the resolutions carried in 1885, 

 the French Association amalga- 

 mated in 1886 with the older "As- 

 sociation scientifique de France," 

 founded by Leverrier in 1864. See 

 ' Compte Rendu de la 16me Ses- 

 sion,' vol. i. p. 1, &c. 



