DE SAUSSURE IN SCIENCE AND LITERATURE 449 



compelled to devote much of his time and mind, and to neglect 

 his special pursuits, in order to prepare discourses on a subject 

 for which, it may without injustice be said, he had no particular 

 vocation, while his life-study was dealt with by a clerical Latinist. 

 It is significant that beyond the lecture -room he never took any 

 steps to put his philosophic tenets before the public. Had not 

 one of his successors in the University, himself a distinguished 

 metaphysician, the late Ernest Naville, discovered the note- 

 books of some members of his own family who were among de 

 Saussure's pupils, this branch of his work might have passed into 

 oblivion, and posterity would have had to be content with the 

 official testimony borne to de Saussure's success by his colleagues. 

 This was of no doubtful warmth. The following is a minute of 

 the meeting of the senate of the Academy on the 23rd January 

 1799, a few days after de Saussure's death : 



' Readiness of speech, clearness in arrangement, choice and wealth 

 of observed facts, judgment and wisdom in the consequences he drew 

 from them, profundity in his views ; these were the distinguishing 

 qualities in his lectures, of which his numerous pupils in this Company 

 will never lose the memory. He did not separate Physics and Philo- 

 sophy from those great conceptions without which Nature, restricted 

 to Matter, would present an inexplicable enigma. Natural Theology, 

 coupled with the doctrine of the independent existence and immor- 

 tality of the soul, formed an essential portion of his teaching.' 



It would appear from the terms of this tribute that de Saussure 

 had been fully successful in dissipating the fears expressed by 

 the Venerable Company at the date of his election, that the 

 preponderance physical studies were everywhere attaining might 

 be detrimental to the interests of religion and the higher philo- 

 sophy as taught in the Academy ; while it may well be, as 

 Professor Borgeaud suggests, that the obligation laid on him by 

 the double lectureship helped to broaden his views and extend 

 his intellectual horizon. In 1762, the moment was, no doubt, 

 an anxious one for all established modes of thought, whether 

 in politics or religion. In that year Rousseau's Emile and Con- 

 trat Social were burnt by the public executioner at Geneva. At 

 Paris the great Encyclopaedia was in course of publication. The 

 philosophy in vogue was materialism ; the doctrines of Hobbes, 

 of Voltaire, and of Holbach. In his youth de Saussure's mind 



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