nd economist, and have gathered up myriad
of facts; and, besides all this, he must possess a vast erudition, an
experienced and professional perspicacity. If these conditions are only
partially complied with, the result will only be a half finished product
or a doubtful alloy, a few rough drafts of the sciences, the rudiments
of pedagogy as with Rousseau, of political economy with Quesnay, Smith,
and Turgot, of linguistics with Des Brosses, and of arithmetical
morals and criminal legislation with Bentham. Finally, if none of these
conditions are complied with, the same efforts will, in the hands of
philosophical amateurs and oratorical charlatans, undoubtedly only
produce mischievous compounds and destructive explosions.--Nevertheless
good procedure remains good even when ignorant and the impetuous men
make a bad use of it; and if we of to day resume the abortive effort of
the eighteenth century, it should be within the guidelines they set out.

*****

NOTES:

[Footnote 3101: "Philosophioe naturalis principia," 1687; "Optics,"
1704.]

[Footnote 3102: See concerning this development Comte's "Philosophie
Positive," vol. I.--At the beginning of the eighteenth century,
mathematical instruments are carried to such perfection as to warrant
the belief that all physical phenomena may be analyzed, light,
electricity, sound, crystallization, heat, elasticity, cohesion and
other effects of molecular forces.--See "Whewell's History of the
Inductive Sciences. II., III.]

[Footnote 3103: The travels of La Condamine in Peru and of Maupertuis in
Lapland.]

[Footnote 3104: Buffon, "Theorie de la terre," 1749; "Epoques de la
Nature," 1788.--"Carte geologique de l'Auvergne," by Desmarets, 1766.]

[Footnote 3105: See a lecture by M. Lacaze-Duthier on Lamarck, "Revue
Scientifique," III. 276-311.]

[Footnote 3106: Buffon, "Histoire Naturelle, II. 340: "All living beings
contain a vast quantity of living and active molecules. Vegetal and
animal life seem to be only the result of the actions of all the small
lives peculiar to each of the active molecules whose life is primitive."
Cf. Diderot, "Revue d'Alembert."]

[Footnote 3108: "Philosophie de Newton," 1738, and "Physique," by
Voltaire.--Cf. du Bois-Raymond, "Voltaire physician," (Revue des Cours
Scientifique, V. 539), and Saigey, "la Physique de Voltaire,"--"Had
Voltaire," writes Lord Brougham, "continued to devote himself to
experimental physics he would undoubtedly have in