30 CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES. [i. 



the many disgraces of the Second Empire, if not of 

 its predecessors. 



"Au point ou nous sommes arrives de ce qu'on appelle la civilisation 

 moderne, la culture des sciences dans leur expression la plus elevee est 

 peut-etre plus necessaire encore a l'e"tat moral d'une nation qu'a sa 

 prosperite rnaterielle. 



" Les grandes deconvertes, les meditations de la pensee dans les nrts, 

 dans les sciences et dans les lettres, en un mot les travaux desinte- 

 resses de 1'esprit dans tous les genres, les centres d'enseignement pro- 

 pres a les faire connaitre, introduisent dans le corps social tout entier 

 1'esprit philosophique ou scientifique, cet esprit de discernement qui 

 soumet tout a une raison severe, condamne 1'ignorance, dissipe les pre- 

 juge*s et les erreurs. Us e"levent le niveau intellectuel. le sentiment 

 moral ; par eux, l'ide*e divine elle-meme se re*pand et s'exalte. ... Si, 

 au moment du peril supreme, la France n'a pas trouve des hommes 

 superieurs pour mettre en oeuvre ses ressources et le courage de ses 

 enfants, il faut 1'attribuer, j'en ai la conviction, a ce que la France s'cst 

 de"smteressee, depuis un demi-sieicle, des grands travaux de la pensee, 

 particulierement dans les sciences exactes." 



Individually, I have no love for academies on the ( 

 continental model, and still less for the system of 

 decorating men of distinction in science, letters, or art, 

 with orders and titles, or enriching them with sinecures. 

 /"What men of science want is only a fair day's wages for 

 J more than a fair day's work ; and most of us, I suspect, 

 would be well content if, for our days and nights of 

 unremitting toil, we could secure the pay which a first- 

 class Treasury clerk earns without any obviously trying 

 strain upon his faculties. The sole order of nobility! 

 which, in my judgment, becomes a philosopher, is that) 

 rank which he holds in the estimation of his fellow- ' 

 workers, who are the only competent judges in such ' 

 matters. Newton and Cuvier lowered themselves when 

 the one accepted an idle knighthood, and the other 

 became a baron of the empire. The great men who went 

 to their graves as Michael Faraday and George Grote 

 seem to me to have understood the dignity of know- 



