CUVIER. 189 



sentences should be written in letters of gold in 

 every senate and learned by heart by all politi- 

 cians. " The true object of science is to lead the 

 mind of man towards its noble destination — a know- 

 ledge of truth — to spread sound and useful ideas 

 among the lowest classes of the people, to draw 

 human beings from the effects of prejudices and 

 passions, to make reason the arbitrator and supreme 

 guide of public opinion." Napoleon, who nearly 

 always chose the best men for a place, made Cuvier 

 a counsellor of the new Imperial University, and 

 the two men thus came frequently in contact. 

 Repeated personal interviews preceded Cuvier's 

 appointment to organize new universities in the 

 foreign states more or less under the sway of 

 France. He undertook the reorganization of the 

 old Italian universities of Piedmont, Genoa, and 

 Tuscany. His reports of these missions speak of 

 the enlightenment of his mind and his truly 

 reasonable and very liberal spirit. Speaking of the 

 universities of Tuscany, he deprecates a too hasty 

 and rash interference with institutions which had 

 been founded and maintained by so many dis- 

 tinguished men of old and in which he found so 

 much to praise and to retain. He made good use 

 of his time in Tuscany by taking drawings of and 

 collecting fossil bones, and in 1 8 1 1 his great work 

 on the fossil remains of animals appeared. He 

 examined into the condition of the universities of 

 Holland, and finally those of lower Germany. 

 These journeys were doubly useful, for they es- 



