THE FRENCH ACADEMY. 297 



ing ourselves as to his writings. What a splendid 

 gathering that will be when he is received ! In what 

 demand seats will be, and lucky the academician who 

 presides on that occasion ! 



" You have been one of those fortunate workers who 

 seem to have been taken into the confidence of what 

 the genius of civilisation requires at a given moment. 

 The first duty which man has had to impose upon him- 

 self in order to become in reality master of the planet 

 which he inhabits has been to rectify, in view of his 

 requirements, the combinations, in many cases opposed 

 to these requirements, which the revolutions of the 

 globe, ignoring altogether the interests of humanity, 

 have inevitably produced. What would have been the 

 fate of our planet if the parts of it which emerge had 

 been much smaller than they are ? if the field of evo- 

 lution of terrestrial life had not been larger than Easter 

 Island or Tahiti ? What historical fact has ever pro- 

 duced such consequences as that action of the sea 

 which suddenly brought Cape Gris-Nez and the cliffs 

 of Dover into being, and created France and England 

 by separating them ? Sometimes beneficial, these 

 blind chances of unforeseeing nature are sometimes 

 also very baleful, and then it is the duty of man, by 

 skilful readjustment, to rectify the evil services which 

 the blind forces of ancient times have done him. It 

 has been said, and with much truth, that if physical 

 astronomy possessed sufficiently powerful means, we 

 should be able to judge as to the more or less 



VOL. II. X 



