Historical Eulogy of the Marquis De Laplace. 7 



Be the physical cause of the formation of the planets what it may, 

 it has fixed upon all these bodies a motion of projection in the same di- 

 rection around an immense globe. By this the solar system is become 

 stable. The same effect is produced in the system of satellites and of 

 rings. The order there is maintained by the power of the central mass. 

 This power is not then, as Newton himself, and as Euler, too, suspect- 

 ed, an adventitious force which, one day, must repair or prevent the 

 trouble which time had caused. It is the law itself of gravitation 

 that governs all, suffices for all, and maintains variety and order. 

 Having emanated once from supreme wisdom, it presides from tlse 

 beginning of time, and renders all disorder impossible. Newton an4 

 Euler still knew not all the perfections of the universe. \ 



In general, every time that there has arisen any doubt on the ex- 

 actness of the Newtonian law, and that, to explain the apparent irreg- 

 ularities, we have proposed the addition of a strange cause, it has 

 always happened, after a thorough examination, that the original law 

 has been verified. It now explains all the known phenomena. The 

 more precise the observations, the more do they conform to the the- 

 ory. Laplace is, of all geometers, the one who has investigated 

 these questions the most ; he has, so to speak, ended them. 



We cannot affirm that it was granted to him to create a science 

 entirely new, as Archimedes and Galileo have done ; to give to math- 

 ematical doctrines original principles, like Descartes, Newton, and 

 Leibnitz ; or like Newton, to transport the first into the skies, and to 

 extend to all the universe the terrestrial dynamics of Galileo; but 

 Laplace was born to bring every thing to perfection, to investigate 

 every thing, to extend all the limits, and to resolve what had been 

 thought incapable of solution. He would have completed the sci- 

 ence of the heavens, if this science could be completed. 



We find again the same character in his researches upon the anal- 

 ysis of probabilities, a science entirely modern and immense, the object 

 of which, often misconceived, has given rise to the most false inter- 

 pretations ; but the application of which will one one day embrace 

 the whole field of human knowledge, a happy supplement to the im- 

 perfection of our nature. 



This art sprung from a single feature of the clear and fruitful genius 

 of Pascal ; it has been cultivated from its origin, by Format and Huy- 

 gens. A philosophical geometer, James Bernouilli, was its principal 

 founder. A remarkably happy discovery of Stirling, the researches of 

 Euler, and especially an ingenious and important application due to La- 



