28 CARNOT. 



minations were able to change. However, I have said 

 too much not to complete the idea. 



In my youth, encouraged by the good-will and friend- 

 ship with which Carnot was kind enough to honour me, 

 I sometimes took the liberty of calling his recollection to 

 those great epochs of our revolutionary annals, when 

 parties, in their frenzied convulsions, were destroyed, 

 conquered, or merely appeased, by abrupt and violent 

 measures, by real coups d'etat. Then I would ask our 

 colleague how he, alone amongst all the others, had con- 

 stantly hoped to arrive at the goal without shocks, and 

 without infringement of the laws ; his answer, always 

 the same, had become deeply graven on my memory; 

 but what was my surprise when, emerging one day from 

 the round of studies which a young astronomer should 

 always impose on himself, I found, word for word, this 

 constant answer which we have just been discussing in 

 the enunciation of a theorem of mechanics ; when I saw 

 that our colleague had always discoursed with me on the 

 political organization of society precisely in the same 

 manner as he speaks in his work, of a machine, in which 

 abrupt changes necessarily involve great losses of force, 

 and sooner or later bring about the complete dislocation 

 of the system ! * 



Can it then be true, Gentlemen, that in the weakness 

 of the human race, the loftiest spirits have been so little 

 convinced of the goodness and truth of the determinations 

 which their hearts inspire them with, that they have 

 found it necessary to confirm and corroborate them with 

 more or less forced assimilations ? 



* This parallel cannot be deemed exact: in the Revolution they 

 wanted to destroy one machine altogether, and supply quite another; 

 so the rules applicable to steady machinery, or government, do not 

 apply. Translator. 



