434 D'ALEMBERT. 



fulness as well as his fame. His existence had been one 

 which the children of this world, the pampered sons of 

 wealth and fashion, the votaries of vulgar pleasure, and 

 the slaves of ordinary ambition would regard as obscure 

 and even wretched; for he had neither wealth nor rank, 

 and all his gratifications were of a purely intellectual 

 kind. But his enjoyment had been unbroken ; he had 

 no wants unsupplied; he tasted perfect tranquillity of 

 mind ; and his friends, who esteemed him, were great men 

 of congenial habits. He had now passed his thirty-fifth 

 year 



" II mezzo di camin di nostra vita," DANTE. 



His devotion to the mathematics had all along estranged 

 him from those branches of physical science which do not 

 lend themselves to analytical investigation. Indeed, as I 

 have shown in the Life of Simson, he appears even to have 

 disregarded all geometrical inquiries which were uncon- 

 nected with modern analysis. But he had always culti- 

 vated a taste for the belles-lettres, and both read and un- 

 derstood poetry. He was also well acquainted with moral 

 and metaphysical subjects. The singularity is, therefore, 

 great, that he should have had no taste for the inductive 

 sciences. Herein he differed widely from other great geo- 

 metricians. To say nothing of the greatest of mathemati- 

 cians, Newton himself, alike of inexhaustible resources in 

 experimental as in analytical and geometrical investi- 

 gation, Euler and Laplace both were much attached to 

 experimental philosophy. D'Alernbert had, moreover, 

 lived in the society of several persons whose pursuits 

 were not at all confined to the mathematics, and with 

 some for whom that science had no attractions. Of these 



