Sse OC ee 
_ 
THE CALCULUS OF PROBABILITIES. 865 
assurances ; the reserve funds for the disbursement of 
pensions, annuities, discounts, &c.: it is under its influ- 
ence that lotteries, and other shameful snares cunningly 
laid for avarice and ignorance, have definitively dis- 
appeared. Laplace has treated these questions, and 
others of a much more complicated nature, with his 
accustomed superiority. In short, the 7’héorte Analytique 
des Probabilités is worthy of the author of the Mécanique 
Oéleste. 
_ A philosopher, whose name is associated with immor- 
tal discoveries, said to his audience who had allowed 
themselves to be influenced by ancient and consecrated 
authorities, “ Bear in mind, Gentlemen, that in questions 
of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the 
humble reasoning of a single individual.” Two centuries 
have passed over these words of Galileo without depre- 
ciating their value, or obliterating their truthful character. 
Thus, instead of displaying a long list of illustrious ad- 
_ mnirers of the three beautiful works of Laplace, we have 
preferred glancing briefly at some of the sublime truths 
which geometry has there deposited. Let us not, how- 
ever, apply this principle in its utmost rigour, and since 
chance has put into our hands some unpublished letters 
of one of those men of genius, whom nature has endowed 
with the rare faculty of seizing at a glance the salient 
points of an object, we may be permitted to extract from 
- them two or three brief and characteristic apprecia- 
tions of the Mécanique Céleste and the Traité des Prob- 
abilités. 
On the 27th Vendemiaire in the year X., General 
Bonaparte, after having received a volume of the Mécan- 
ique Céleste, wrote to Laplace in the following terms :— 
“The first six months which I shall have at my disposal 
