THE MIND OF FRANCE' 



In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, France 

 produced a large number of great masters in all fields of 

 thought in literature, science, and the arts. She thus 

 kept abreast of all intellectual progress in Europe, and 

 often led the way. 



These great men were usually skilful teachers as well 

 as creators and discoverers; so that they had worthy 

 disciples groups of younger scholars who spread abroad 

 the masters' ideas, and prolonged their influence by adding 

 the needed interpretations and modifications. In many 

 fields, the works of these French leaders set standards not 

 only for France, but for the world. 



Their intellectual work possessed, as a rule, certain 

 qualities which characterize the French mind, such as 

 broad sympathy, constructive imagination, and a ten- 

 dency to prefer the concrete or realistic to the abstract, 

 and fact to speculation. These intellectual characteristics 

 of the French have proved to be extraordinarily perma- 

 nent, abiding generation after generation, and surviving 

 immense political and social changes. The French scholar 

 is apt to be an open-minded man, receptive toward new 

 ideas, and an ardent lover of truth fluent and progres- 

 sive. The French scientists have rarely been extreme 

 specialists, narrow in their interests and their chosen 

 objects. They have recognized that no science can be pur- 

 sued successfully in isolation ; its affiliations and adjuncts 

 must also be studied. They have not been subdued 



l [By CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, emeritus President of Harvard 

 University. ED.] 



