THEOREM IN MECHANICS. 29 
This doubt will not astonish you if I add that one of 
the learned men whose works have conferred the great- 
est distinction on this Academy, conducted himself on all 
difficult occasions (so we are to believe) according to the 
following assuredly very convenient maxim: “ Water 
takes exactly the form of the vase which contains it; a 
wise mind should as faithfully model itself on the circum- 
stances of the moment.” 
I might quote also another of our colleagues, equally 
celebrated, of whom a certain personage asked one day 
in my presence, by what secret he had passed through 
the terrible periods of our civil discords without mishap : 
“Every country in a state of revolution,” answered he, 
“is a carriage of which the horses have taken the bit 
between their teeth ; to wish to stop the horses is to rush 
on a catastrophe from gayety of heart; he who leaps from 
the carriage exposes himself to being crushed under the 
wheels; the best plan is to abandon one’s self to the 
movement, and shut one’s eyes; so did [!”* 
In the work whose analysis has carried me farther 
than I expected, Carnot has devoted some lines to the 
question of perpetual motion! He shows not only that 
every machine, of whatever form, abandoned to itself will 
stop, but he moreover assigns the moment at which that 
must happen. 
The arguments of our colleague are excellent ; no 
geometer will dispute their exactness ; may we yet hope 
that they will nip in the bud the numerous projects which 
every year, or rather “every spring,’ sees burst into 
flower ? 
This is what we cannot hope for. The contrivers of 
* If the horses could not be stopped, surely an attempt should be 
made to guide them.— Translator. 
