THEOREM IN MECHANICS. 29 



This doubt will not astonish you if I add that one of 

 the learned men whose works have conferred the great- 

 est distinction on this Academy, conducted himself on all 

 difficult occasions (so we are to believe) according to the 

 following assuredly very convenient maxim : " Water 

 takes exactly the form of the vase which contains it ; a 

 wise mind should as faithfully model itself on the circum- 

 stances of the moment." 



I might quote also another of our colleagues, equally 

 celebrated, of whom a certain personage asked one day 

 in my presence, by what secret he had passed through 

 the terrible periods of our civil discords without mishap : 

 " Every country in a state of revolution," answered he, 

 "is a carriage of which the horses have taken the bit 

 between their teeth ; to wish to stop the horses is to rush 

 on a catastrophe from gayety of heart ; he who leaps from 

 the carriage exposes himself to being crushed under the 

 wheels ; the best plan is to abandon one's self to the 

 movement, and shut one's eyes ; so did I ! " * 



In the work whose analysis has carried me farther 

 than I expected, Carnot has devoted some lines to the 

 question of perpetual motion ! He shows not only that 

 every machine, of whatever form, abandoned to itself will 

 stop, but he moreover assigns the moment at which that 

 must happen. 



The arguments of our colleague are excellent ; no 

 geometer will dispute their exactness ; may we yet hope 

 that they will nip in the bud the numerous projects which 

 every year, or rather "every spring," sees burst into 

 flower ? 



This is what we cannot hope for. The contrivers of 



* If the horses could not be stopped, surely an attempt should be 

 made to guide them. Translator. 



