34 SCIENTIFIC ARRANGEMENT. 



Of course you will not neglect the professional classi- 

 fications ; but of these I am not now speaking ; you will 

 pursue them most advantageously under the especial 

 guidance of the respective professors and masters of the 

 Institution. 



The principles of science, and the inductive habits of 

 correct philosophical reasoning, will all along furnish 

 you with considerable advantages, besides those that 

 flow from the love of absolute accuracy in all things 

 which they naturally tend to produce. By putting you 

 in possession of a few general facts, philosophy will also 

 enable you to determine, by correct and cogent reason- 

 ing, what will be the result of any supposed combination 

 of them, and thus to comprehend an immense variety 

 of particulars, which the most powerful and well-exer- 

 cised memory could not so retain as to recall at pleasure. 

 The knowledge of such general facts relieves you at 

 once from the necessity of treasuring up in your memory 

 all those truths which are involved in the principles 

 you have established, and which may, without difficulty, 

 be deduced from them by reasoning ; for by means of 

 what has been thus established, you may often prosecute 

 your discoveries synthetically into various regions of 

 inquiry to which you could never have access by imme- 



la vitesse ou la force par le temps, il faudra alors remonter aux Equations 

 primitives par les regies de 1' analyse inverse. Ces notions de la vitesse 

 et de la force acceleratrice sont, comme Ton voit, tres simples et inde"pen- 

 dantes de toute metaphysique. 



" Elles sont fondees sur la nature du mouvement regarde comme le 

 transport d'un corps d'un lieu a un autre. Si un corps demeure en repos, 

 sa vitesse est evidemment nulle; mais il peut eprouver 1'action d'une 

 force acceleratrice qui, e"tant arretee par quelque obstacle ne produit 

 qu'une tendance au mouvement. Cette force est alors ce qu'on appelle 

 pression enforce morte, et peut tre comparee a 1'action qu'un corps pesant 

 exerce sur 1'obstacle qui 1'empeche de tomber." La Grange, Theorie des 

 Fonctions analytiques, p. 316. 



