THE CENTENNIAL OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE. 715 



present time — must I add to-day the name of a man whom I knew 

 more than fifty years ago at the normal school, where he was a pupil 

 and I a professor, who was a friend to every one of us, since no one 

 could know him and not love him, and who was, above all, the friend 

 and benefactor of mankind, the immortal name of Louis Pasteur? The 

 roof of this hall still resounds with the echo of the acclamations that 

 welcomed him when he came to this very place to receive the homage 

 of the whole scientific world. Mankind, on that day at least, was 

 grateful and just. 



Thus the Institute of France has had, since the beginning, a magnifi- 

 cent membership of great men. We are proud of our new glories, but 

 we preserve a grateful and filial worship for the heroes of olden days. 

 We do not renounce Corneille, Eaciue, nor Boileau, nor La Fontaine, 

 nor Bossuet, nor Voltaire, nor Montesquieu, nor Buffon, nor Clairant, 

 nor d'Alembert, nor Huyghens, nor Mariotte, nor Mabillon, nor Rollin, 

 nor Turgot, nor Lebrun, nor Mignard, nor Lesueur, nor Philippe de 

 Champagne, nor Mansart, nor Soufflot. 



Gentlemen, the tricolored flag is still for us "the beloved flag;" it is 

 the star of liberty and of civilization, but we follow with love and 

 pride in our hearts the white flag with the lilies of France as we go 

 back from age to age to the century which was the great century, and 

 which remains, emphatically, the "French century.'' 



It was on the 29th of January, 1635, that the French Academy 

 received its official consecration. The Academy of Fine Arts enjoyed 

 the same honor in 1648, the Academy of Inscriptions in 1663, and the 

 Academy of Sciences in 1666. It does not suffice to restore the honor 

 of creating the academies to Louis XIII and to Richelieu. We must 

 go back as far as Conrart. The first, according to date, the French 

 Academy, is, like many great institutions, due to private initiative. 

 Conrart was nobody; he never became anybody. He is famous only 

 by his silence, a kind of fame specially created for him by Boileau. 

 It was he who first conceived the idea of making rules for a company 

 of men who met by turns at the different members' houses to discuss 

 literature. There were nine men in this company. "Insignificant 

 men," said Voltaire in a disdainful tone. "Obscure men," he after- 

 wards added, in speaking of the first academicians, twenty-eight in 

 number, who received this title by letters patent from the King in 1635. 

 Of course a Corneille or a Racine was not to be had on the spot to 

 introduce into the academy. We had to wait twelve years for Corneille, 

 thirty-six years for Bossuet, thirty-seven for Racine, forty-nine for 

 La Fontaine and Boileau. The academy adorned itself with great 

 men very slowly. It was never to have forty great men at once. JSTo 

 assembly, no matter when it existed nor to what nation it belonged, 

 can ever have at one time more than a limited number of great men. 

 Those whom Voltaire called insignificant men were perhaps not so 

 insignificant as he thought them to be. They seem insignificant to 



