ifferent kinds of knowledge. Newton is not
reckoned among the poets, nor Milton among the geometricians: the verses
of Leibnitz are bad. There is not a man who, in a single art, as poetry,
or painting, has succeeded in all the branches of it. Corneille and
Racine have done nothing in comedy comparable to Moliere: Michael
Angelo has not drawn the pictures of Albani, nor Albani painted those
of Julius Romano. The genius of the greatest men appears then to be
confined within very narrow limits. This is, doubtless, true: but I ask,
what is the cause? Is it time, or is it wit, which men want to render
themselves illustrious in the different arts and sciences? The progress
of the human mind, it is said, ought to be the same in all the arts and
sciences: the operations of the mind are reduced to the knowledge of the
resemblances and differences that subsist between various objects. It is
then by observation that we obtain, in all the different kinds of study,
the new and general ideas on which our superiority depends. Every great
physician, every great chemist, may then become a great geometrician,
a great astronomer, a great politician, and the first, in short, in all
the sciences This fact being stated, it will doubtless be concluded,
that it is the short duration of human life that forces superior
minds to limit themselves to one kind of study. It must, however, be
confessed, that there are talents and qualities possessed only by the
exclusion of some others. Among mankind some are filled with the love
of glory, and are not susceptible of any other of the passions: some may
excel in natural philosophy, civil law, geometry, and, in short, in all
the sciences that consist in the comparison of ideas. A fondness for any
other study can only distract or precipitate them into errors. There
are other men susceptible not Only of the love of glory, but an infinite
number of other passions: these may become celebrated in different
kinds of study, where the success depends on being moved. Such is,
for instance, the dramatic kind of writing: but, in order to paint the
passions, we must, as I have already said, feel them very warmly: we are
ignorant both of the language of the passions and of the sensations they
excite in us, when we have not experienced them. Thus ignorance of this
kind always produces mediocrity. If Fontenelle had been obliged to paint
the characters of Rhadamistus, Brutus, or Cataline, that great man would
certainly ha