506 
pular works and instructions, collected 
by M. M. Parmentier, Huzard, Tessier, 
Thouin, and Bosc, who have made 
known to cultivators so many important 
agricultural discoveries. 
The chapter on technolegy, or the 
knowledge of the arts and trades, the last 
of oer labours, will present improvements 
the most numerous, and th@ most varivus: 
from the most simple operations of rural 
and domestic economy, to the most com- 
plicated and delicate manufactures, there 
is no process which has not experienced 
the beneficent influence of the sciences. 
The warming of apartments, the heating 
of kitchens, and of work-shops, the light- 
ing of houses, arr of streets, are perform- 
ed with considerable saving; a new mode 
of bleaching, a variety of processes and 
compositions, have improved the art of 
painting cloths; dying in enamel, paint- 
ingin oil, are indebted to chemistry, for 
new colours; hides and skins of all 
sorts are prepared in a third part of the 
time formerly required; the common 
earthenwares are infinitely more lasting, 
and more salubrious; the peorest dwell- 
ings are provided with white and solid 
glasses; the most indifferent soils can im- 
prove their wines; the charcoal filtres 
every where assure the salubrity of the 
waters; all kinds of salts are manufac- 
tured, as well in France as in foreign 
eountries; even the mineral waters, so 
necessary in medicine, have been imi- 
tated artificially; lastly, the art of ste- 
reotype printing, brings to the poorest 
Cottage the compositions of genius; and 
it is to the natural sciences, to the gene- 
ral taste which they have inspired, to the 
hebt which they have shed, even upon 
work-shops, that the public is indebted 
for all these advantages. 
If we had to address an ordinary 
prince, we should have dwelt chiefly on 
these immediate advantages ; govern- 
ments for the most part fancy that 
they have a right to encourage the 
sciences, only in their immediate applica- 
tion to the wants of society; and un- 
doubtedly, the greatest part of the exten- 
sive view which we have. sketched, may 
appear to them, as to the vulgar, only as 
a series of speculations, more curious 
than useful. . 
» But your Majesty, nursed as it were in 
the most sublime sciences, is perfectly 
aware that all these practical operations, 
the sources of the conveniencies of life, 
re only very simple applications of the 
general theories; and that no proposition 
is discovered in the sciences, which may 
= ; 
Progress of the Sciences since 1789. 
[Dee. f, 
not be the seed or source of a thousand 
useful inventions, 
We may inform your Majesty, that no 
physical truth is indifferent to the com- 
forts of society, as no moral truth can be 
indifferent to the order by which socicty 
is regulated; the former are not even fo- 
reign to the basis on which the state of 
the people and the political relations of 
nations rest. | . 
Feudal anarchy would perhaps still 
exist, if gunpowder had not changed the 
art of war; the two worlds would still be 
Separated without the magnet; and ne 
one can foresee what would become of 
their present relations, if the want of co= 
lonial productions were to be supplied by 
indivenous plants. . 
‘There is moreover another hght, of an 
infinitely superior nature, in which a 
prince, like your Majesty, and a body 
such as that now admitted to the honour 
of addressing you, may, and perhaps 
ought, to consider the sciences, 
To lead the human mind to its noble 
destinatioun—ihe knowledge of trath ; 
to diffuse sound -ideas amongst the 
lowest classes of the people ; to withdraw 
men from the empire of prejudice and 
passions ; to constitute reason as the 
sovereign arbiter and guide of publie 
Opinion ; such is their essential object: 
thus itis that they coneur most power= 
fully in the advancement of civilization § 
this is what ought.to secure to them the 
protection of governments, who. wish to 
render their power immoveable, by 
founding ic on the common welfare,” 
Our wish 1s to have worthily described 
the great mass of the efforts and succes- 
ses of the learned men of our age; to 
have represented to the supreme autho- 
rity, in their true light, these respectable 
men, constantly occupied in enlightening: 
their fellow-men, and in multiplying for 
them those general truths, which form 
the patrimony of our species, and from 
which so many useful applications flow. - 
This hope alone has supported us 
through the long and laborious career, 
in which we have been engaged by the 
orders of your Majesty, and the-confi- 
dence of the class which has chosen us te 
be its organs. 
Your Timpevial Majesty has ordered 
this class to propose to you, the most ef= 
fectual means of keeping up, in those who 
cultivate the sciences, that emulation 
which animates them, of constaitly -di- 
recling their labours to the most useful 
ends, and of assuring to thena successors 
worthy of themselves. 
Without 
