274 SCIENCE AND METHOD. 



of places to which, in our day, comfortable steamers 

 carry, every summer, crowds of tourists and young 

 English ladies. But at that date Cook's Agency did 

 not exist, and Maupertuis honestly thought that he 

 had made a Polar expedition. 



Perhaps he was not altogether wrong. Russians 

 and Swedes are to-day making similar measurements 

 at Spitzbergen, in a country where there are real ice- 

 packs. But their resources are far greater, and the 

 difference of date fully compensates for the difference 

 of latitude. 



Maupertuis' name has come down to us considerably 

 mauled by the claws of Dr. Akakia, for Maupertuis 

 had the misfortune to displease Voltaire, who was 

 then king of the mind. At first he was extravagantly 

 praised by Voltaire ; but the flattery of kings is as 

 much to be dreaded as their disfavour, for it is followed 

 by a terrible day of reckoning. Voltaire himself learnt 

 something of this. 



Voltaire called Maupertuis "my kind master of 

 thought," "Marquess of the Arctic Circle," "dear 

 flattener of the world and of Cassini," and even, as 

 supreme flattery, " Sir Isaac Maupertuis " ; and he 

 wrote, "There is none but the King of Prussia that 

 I place on a level with you ; his sole defect is that he 

 is not a geometrician." But very soon the scene 

 changes ; he no longer speaks of deifying him, like 

 the Argonauts of old, or of bringing down the council 

 of the gods from Olympus to contemplate his work, 

 but of shutting him up in a mad-house. He speaks 

 no more of his sublime mind, but of his despotic pride, 

 backed by very little science and much absurdity. 



1 do not wish to tell the tale of these mock-heroic 



