MEMOIR OF DAUBENTON. 
217 
Another disposition of his mind, and which has fur- 
ther contributed to these imputations of pusillanimity 
or egotism which have been made against him even in 
printed works, which however does not justify them 
the more, was his entire obedience to the law, not as 
being just, hut simply as the law. This submission to 
human laws was absolutely of the same description as 
that which he had for the laws of nature : it no more 
permitted him to murmur against those which deprived 
him of fortune, or the reasonable use of his liberty, than 
against those which disfigured his limbs with gout. 
Some one has said of him, that he looked upon the 
swellings of his fingers with the same sang-froid as he 
would have done the knots on a tree ; and this was 
literally true. It was equally true of the indifference 
with which he would have given up his situation and 
fortune, and gone into distant exile, had tyrants re- 
quired it of him. 
Besides, even although the maintenance of his tran- 
quillity may have been the motive of some of his actions, 
does not the use which he made of that tranquillity 
absolve him from blame ? And the man who extracted 
so many secrets from Nature, and laid the foundations 
of a science ahnost now ; who has given to his country 
an entire branch of industry; who has reared one of 
the most important monuments in science, and formed 
so many enlightened pupils, many of whom now occupy 
the first places among the philosophers of the day, Does 
such a man now require to he justified for having 
