726 THE CENTENNIAL OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE. 



and promoting talent." The right of accumulating academies still 

 exists, but that of accumulating indemnities has been done away with. 

 We are still at the 750 myriagrams. Those among us who belong to 

 several academies receive only one indemnity. We boast of not being 

 rich. The members of the institute, when 750 myriagrams of wheat, 

 or, to speak more intelligibly, 1,500 francs, were fixed as the indemnity 

 which was to relieve them of all cares of life, never imagined in their 

 most ambitious dreams that they would possess one of these days one 

 of the most beautiful palaces in the world, with a picture gallery, a 

 library created all at once by the gift of a great writer and doubled 

 by an eminent scholar, woods, lakes, and a whole world of beautiful 

 souvenirs. 



It would perhaps be well to recall here the fact, in order to explain 

 both our wealth and our poverty, that all gifts made to the institute 

 are made to science or to the poor. The members of the institute never 

 profit by them. A new donation is for them only an increase of labor. 

 The Emperor Napoleon III wished one day to raise the indemnity from 

 1,500 francs to 5,000, which made a very respectable quantity of wheat. 

 The institute, however, upon being consulted expressed its gratitude 

 and refused. 



It has sometimes been remarked that all the efforts of the revolution 

 to transform the academies were after all but illusory. On the 8th of 

 August, 1793, they are suppressed — on the 25th of October, 1795, they 

 are replaced by the institute. It was almost immediately perceived 

 that this institute, just because it was new, was not likely to live. From 

 1803 they commence to reform it; the reforms are multiplied from year 

 to year, and to what did they lead? To suppressing the greater part 

 of the innovations, to restoring the old academies, and even, in 1826, 

 to giving them back their names. Those that speak thus do not see 

 that there remains to the revolution the glory of having established a 

 close bond between the academies, of having appreciated the solidarity 

 of letters, sciences and arts, of having put the academies in more inti- 

 mate communication with the public, and of having given them new 

 and serious means of influence. 



From the ancient associations and the rearranging of the new ones 

 resulted the present institute, in which the protection of the state does 

 not exclude the liberty of the members, where each one is alone respon- 

 sible for his own doctrine, where solidarity of honor, which unites all 

 the members, makes eccentricities impossible, where all the members 

 united, without losing their identity, lend each other mutual assistance 

 and yet never fall into confusion, where all the work done tends to the 

 manifestation of truth and to the triumph of art — a body, in fine, which 

 unites in just proportions, authority and liberty, and which deserves 

 to be held up as a model to all civilized nations. 



I venture to add, gentlemen, that your presence here, that of the 

 respected chief of the nation, and the splendor which is the result, will 

 give to the Institute of France a new consecration. 



