RENOUNCES THE PROFESSION OF THE CHURCH. 379 
pression of which you may judge yourselves: “ Fourier,” 
replied the minister, “not being noble, could not enter 
the artillery, although he were a second Newton.” 
Gentlemen, there is in the strict enforcement of regu- 
lations, even when they are most absurd, something 
respectable which I have a pleasure in recognizing; in 
the present instance nothing could soften the odious 
character of the minister’s words. It is not true in 
reality that no one could formerly enter into the artillery 
who did not possess a title of nobility; a certain fortune 
frequently supplied the want of parchments. Thus it 
was not a something undefinable, which, by the way, our 
ancestors the Franks had not yet invented, that was 
wanting to young Fourier, but rather an income of a 
few hundred livres, which the men who were then 
placed at the head of the country would have refused 
to acknowledge the genius of Newton as a just equiva- 
lent for! Treasure up these facts, Gentlemen; they 
form an admirable illustration of the immense advances 
which France has made during the last forty years. 
Posterity, moreover, will see in this, not the excuse, — 
but the explanation of some of those sanguinary dissen- 
sions which stained our first revolution. 
Fourier not having been enabled to gird on the sword, 
assumed the habit of a Benedictine, and repaired to the 
Abbey of St. Benoit-sur-Loire, where he intended to 
pass the period of his noviciate. He had not yet taken 
any vows when, in 1789, every mind was captivated 
with beautifully seductive ideas relative to the social 
regeneration of France. Fourier now renounced the 
profession of the Church; but this circumstance did not 
prevent his former masters from appointing him to the 
principal chair of mathematics in the Military School of 
