338 RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



called into action, he becomes, more than com- 

 mon men, liable to miss the roads to truths of 

 extreme consequence. 



This is so obvious, that charges are frequently 

 brought against the study of mathematics, as un- 

 fitting men for those occupations which depend 

 upon our common instinctive convictions and 

 feelings, upon the unsystematic exercise of the 

 understanding with regard to common relations 

 and common occurrences. Bonaparte observed 

 of Laplace when he was placed in a public office 

 of considerable importance, that he did not dis- 

 charge it in so judicious and clear-sighted a 

 manner as his high intellectual fame might lead 

 most persons to expect.* " He sought," that 

 great judge of character said, " subtleties in 

 every subject, and carried into his official em- 

 ployments the spirit of the method of infinitely 

 small quantities," by which the mathematician 

 solves his most abstruse problems. And the 

 complaint that mathematical studies make men 

 insensible to moral evidence and to poetical 

 beauties, is so often repeated as to show that 



* A I'interieur le ministre Quinette fut remplace par Laplace, 

 geometre du premier rang, mais qui ne tarda pas a se montrer 

 administrateur plus que mediocre : des son premier travail les 

 consuls s'apenjurent qu'ils s'etaient trompes : Laplace ne saisissait 

 aucune question sous son vrai point de vue : il cherchait des 

 subtilites partout, n'avait que des idees problematiques, et portait 

 enfin 1'esprit des infiniment petits dans 1'administration. Me- 

 moires ecrits d Ste Helene, i. 3. 



