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thing had occurred in France in the preceding generation ; and 
Newton and the “ Principia,” actually broke down the evil influence 
in France which they contributed to erect in England. The seventy 
years which lie half in the seventeenth, and half in the eighteenth 
century, constitute the most barren period of French science. A 
brilliant constellation, — Pascal, Fermat, Mersenne, with Descartes at 
their head, — had just set, and thick and long-continued darkness fol- 
lowed. The brightness of Descartes had blinded the eyes of science. 
Need I refer to an earlier period, when a similar influence effectually 
checked all progress, until Galileo broke the chain which had held 
the civilized world in bondage for centuries, — a chain which Aristotle, 
a mighty genius like Newton and Descartes, had bound about his 
followers. In a minor degree, the same influence has been exerted 
by Bacon, by Locke, and by others. Now, surely it may be ex- 
pected that a Society like this, not restricted to men of one science, 
nor even to men of science at all, but embracing every department 
of human knowledge, should operate powerfully as a preventive to 
the recurrence of such evils. The influence of great men is rarely 
injurious, except at a distance, or after their personal influence has 
disappeared. It was so in the case of Newton. Contact destroys 
erroneous impressions, — changes evil into good. Correspondence and 
cotemporary publication produce much of the same effects. Hence 
great names always appear in clusters. Hooke and Huyghens, 
and Leibnitz and the Bernoullis, lived around Newton. It was after 
his death that his countrymen placed him on a solitary pedestal. 
Minds, like trees, spring upwards from their mutual shelter. The 
poet’s a lodge in some vast wilderness the dreamland of literary 
leisure is not the soil in which great thoughts thrive. Beal science, 
real philosophy, I had almost said real poetry, comes from the 
dwellers among their fellow-men, — comes from the smoke of great 
cities. The heart of man drinks in inspiration from the thoughts 
which are floating about it. Thus, for example, in the science of 
optics, — a science which seemed to be exhausted, — Malus and Biot, 
and Young and Brewster, and Fresnel and Arago, mutually in- 
fluenced each other, and their influence extended to Fraunhofer and 
Cauchy, and Wollaston and Seebeck, and Airy and Herschel and 
Plateau, and Wheatstone and Purkinje,and Hamilton and M‘Cullagh, 
and Lloyd and Stokes ; until the list of men raised to enduring fame 
by a single worn-out science is too long for enumeration. 
