RENOUNCES THE PROFESSION OF THE CHURCH. 379 



pression of which you may judge yourselves : " Fourier," 

 replied the minister, " not being noble, could not enter 

 the artillery, although he were a second Newton." 



Gentlemen, there is in the strict enforcement of regu- 

 lations, even when they are most absurd, something 

 respectable which I have a pleasure in recognizing ; in 

 the present instance nothing could soften the odious 

 character of the minister's words. It is not true in 

 reality that no one could formerly enter into the artillery 

 who did not possess a title of nobility ; a certain fortune 

 frequently supplied the want of parchments. Thus it 

 was not a something undefinable, which, by the way, our 

 ancestors the Franks had not yet invented, that was 

 wanting to young Fourier, but rather an income of a 

 few hundred livres, which the men who were then 

 placed at the head of the country would have refused 

 to acknowledge the genius of Newton as a just equiva- 

 lent for ! Treasure up these facts, Gentlemen ; they 

 form an admirable illustration of the immense advances 

 which France has made during the last forty years. 

 Posterity, moreover, will see in this, not the excuse, 

 but the explanation of some of those sanguinary dissen- 

 sions which stained our first revolution. 



Fourier not having been enabled to gird on the sword, 

 assumed the habit of a Benedictine, and repaired to the 

 Abbey of St. Benoit-sur-Loire, where he intended to 

 pass the period of his noviciate. He had not yet taken 

 any vows when, in 1789, every mind was captivated 

 with beautifully seductive ideas relative to the social 

 regeneration of France. Fourier now renounced the 

 profession of the Church ; but this circumstance did not 

 prevent his former masters from appointing him to the 

 principal chair of mathematics in the Military School of 



