Chapter 9

From the year 1671 to the year 1758, the prize subjects proposed by the French Academy related to questions of religion and morality. The eloquence of the candidates had therefore had to exercise itself successively on the knowledge of salvation; on the merit and dignity of martyrdom; on the purity of the soul and of the body; on the danger there is in certain paths that appear safe, &c. &c. It had even to paraphrase the _Ave Maria_. According to the literal intentions of the founder, (Balzac,) each discourse was ended by a short prayer. Duclos thought in 1758, that five or six volumes of similar sermons must have exhausted the matter, and on his proposal the Academy decided that, in future, it would give as the subject of the eloquence prize, the eulogiums of the great men of the nation. Marshal Saxe, Duguay Trouin, Sully, D'Aguesseau, Descartes, figured first on this list. Later, the Academy felt itself authorized to propose the éloge of kings themselves; it entered on this new branch at the beginning of 1767, by asking for the éloge of Charles V.

Bailly entered the lists, but his essay obtained only an honourable mention.

Nothing is more instructive than to search out at what epoch originated the principles and opinions of persons who have acted an important part on the political scene, and how those opinions developed themselves. By a fatality much to be regretted, the elements of these investigations are rarely numerous or faithful. We shall not have to express these regrets relative to Bailly. Each composition shows us the serene, candid, and virtuous mind of the illustrious writer, in a new and true point of view. The éloge of Charles V. was the starting point, followed by a long series of works, and it ought to arrest our attention for a while.

The writings, crowned with the approbation of the French Academy, did not reach the public eye till they had been submitted to the severe censure of four Doctors in Theology. A special and digested approbation by the high dignitaries of the Church, whom the illustrious assembly always possessed among her members, was not a sufficient substitute for the humbling formality. If we are sure that we possess the éloge of Charles V. such as it flowed from the author's pen; if we have not reason to fear that the thoughts have undergone some mutilation, we owe it to the little favour that the discourse of Bailly enjoyed in the sitting of the Academy in 1767. Those thoughts, however, would have defied the most squeamish mind, the most shadowy susceptibility. The panegyrist unrolls with emotion the frightful misfortunes that assailed France during the reign of King John. The temerity, the improvidence of that monarch; the disgraceful passions of the King of Navarre; his treacheries; the barbarous avidity of the nobility; the seditious disposition of the people; the sanguinary depredations of the great companies; the ever recurring insolence of England; all this is expressed without disguise, yet with extreme moderation. No trait reveals, no fact even foreshadows in the author, the future President of a reforming National Assembly, still less the Mayor of Paris, during a revolutionary effervescence. The author may make Charles V. say that he will discard favour, and will call in renown to select his representatives; it will appear to him that taxes ought to be laid on riches and spared on poverty; he may even exclaim that oppression awakens ideas of equality. His temerity will not overleap this boundary. Bossuet, Massillon, Bourdaloue, made the Chair resound with bold words of another description.

I am far from blaming this scrupulous reserve; when moderation is united to firmness, it becomes power. In a word, however, Bailly's patriotism might, I was about to say ought to, have shown itself more susceptible, more ardent, prouder. When in the elegant prosopopoeia which closes the éloge, the King of England has recalled with arrogance the fatal day of Poitiers, ought he not instantly to have restrained that pride within just limits? ought he not to have cast a hasty glance on the components of the Black Prince's army? to examine whether a body of troops, starting from Bordeaux, recruiting in Guienne, did not contain more Gascons than English? whether France, now bounded by its natural limits, in its magnificent unity, would not have a right, every thing being examined, to consider that battle almost as an event of civil war? ought he not, in short, to have pointed out, in order to corroborate his remarks, that the knight to whom King John surrendered himself, Denys de Morbecque, was a French officer banished from Artois?

Self-reliance on the field of battle is the first requisite for obtaining success; now, would not our self-reliance be shaken, if the men most likely to know the facts, and to appreciate them wisely, appeared to think that the Frank race were nationally inferior to other races who had peopled this or that region, either neighbouring or distant? This, let it be well remarked, is not a puerile susceptibility. Great events may, on a given day, depend on the opinion that the nation has formed of itself. Our neighbours on the other side of the Channel, afford examples on this subject that it would be well to imitate.

In 1767, the Academy of Berlin proposed a prize for an éloge of Leibnitz. The public was somewhat surprised at it. It was generally supposed that Leibnitz had been admirably praised by Fontenelle, and that the subject was exhausted. But from the moment that Bailly's essay, crowned in Prussia, was published, former impressions were quite changed. Every one was anxiously asserting that Bailly's appreciation of his subject might be read with pleasure and benefit, even after Fontenelle's. The éloge composed by the historian of Astronomy will not, certainly, make us forget that written by the first Secretary of the Academy of Sciences. The style is, perhaps, too stiff; perhaps it is also rather declamatory; but the biography, and the analysis of his works, are more complete, especially if we consider the notes; the _universal_ Leibnitz is exhibited under more varied points of view.

In 1768, Bailly obtained the award of the prize of eloquence proposed by the Academy of Rouen. The subject was the éloge of Peter Corneille. In reading this work of our fellow-academician, we may be somewhat surprised at the immense distance that the modest, the timid, the sensitive Bailly puts between the great Corneille, his special favourite, and Racine.

When the French Academy, in 1768, proposed an éloge of Molière for competition, our candidate was vanquished only by Chamfort. And yet, if people had not since that time treated of the author of "Tartufe" to satiety, perhaps I would venture to maintain, notwithstanding some inferiority of style, that Bailly's discourse offered a neater, truer, and more philosophic appreciation of the principal pieces of that immortal poet.

DEBATES RELATIVE TO THE POST OF PERPETUAL SECRETARY OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.

We have seen D'Alembert, ever since the year 1763, encouraging Bailly to exercise himself in a style of literary composition then much liked, the style of éloge, and holding out to him in prospect the situation of Perpetual Secretary of the Academy of Sciences. Six years after, the illustrious geometer gave the same advice, and perhaps held out the same hopes, to the young Marquis de Condorcet. This candidate, docile to the voice of his protector, rapidly composed and published the éloges of the early founders of the Academy, of Huyghens, of Mariotte, of Roëmer, &c.

At the beginning of 1773, the Perpetual Secretary, Grandjean de Fouchy, requested that Condorcet should be nominated his successor, provided he survived him. D'Alembert strongly supported this candidateship. Buffon supported Bailly with equal energy; the Academy presented for some weeks the aspect of two hostile camps. There was at last a strongly disputed electoral battle; the result was the nomination of Condorcet.

I should regret if we had to judge of the sentiments of Bailly, after this defeat, by those of his adherents. Their anger found vent in terms of unpardonable asperity. They said that D'Alembert had "basely betrayed friendship, honour, and the first principles of probity."

They here alluded to a promise of protection, support, coöperation, dating ten years back. But was his promise absolute? Engaging himself personally to Bailly for a situation that might not become vacant for ten or fifteen years, had D'Alembert, contrary to his duty as an academician, declared beforehand, that any other candidate, whatever might be his talents, would be to him as not existing?

This is what ought to have been ascertained, before giving themselves up to such violent and odious imputations.

Was it not quite natural that the geometer D'Alembert, having to pronounce his opinion between two honourable learned men, gave the preference to the candidate who seemed to him most imbued with the higher mathematics? The éloges of Condorcet were, besides, by their style, much more in harmony with those that the Academy had approved during three quarters of a century. Before the declaration of the vacancy on the 27th of February, 1773, D'Alembert said to Voltaire, relative to the recueil by Condorcet, "Some one asked me the other day what I thought of that work. I answered by writing on the frontispiece, 'Justice, propriety, learning, clearness, precision, taste, elegance, and nobleness.'" And Voltaire wrote, on the 1st of March, "I have read, while dying, the little book by M. de Condorcet; it is as good in its departments as the éloges by Fontenelle. There is a more noble and more modest philosophy in it, though bold."

And excitement in words and action could not be legitimately reproached in a man who had felt himself supported by a conviction of such distinct and powerful influence.

Among the éloges by Bailly, there is one, that of the Abbé de Lacaille, which not having been written for a literary academy, shows no longer any trace of inflation or declamation, and might, it seems to me, compete with some of the best éloges by Condorcet. Yet, it is curious, that this excellent biography contributed, perhaps as much as D'Alembert's opposition, to make Bailly's claims fail. Vainly did the celebrated astronomer flatter himself in his exordium, "that M. de Fouchy, who, as Secretary of the Academy, had already paid his tribute to Lacaille, would not be displeased at his having followed him in the same career ... that he would not be blamed for repeating the praises due to an illustrious man."

Bailly, in fact, was not blamed aloud; but when the hour for retreat had sounded in M. de Fouchy's ear, without any fuss, without showing himself offended in his self-love, remaining apparently modest, this learned man, in asking for an assistant, selected one who had not undertaken to repeat his éloges; who had not found his biographies insufficient. This preference ought not to be, and was not, uninfluential in the result of the competition.

Bailly, if Perpetual Secretary of the Academy, would have been obliged to reside constantly at Paris. But Bailly, as member of the Astronomical Section, might retire to the country, and thus escape those thieves of time, as Byron called them, who especially abound in the metropolis. Bailly settled at Chaillot. It was at Chaillot that our fellow-academician composed his best works, those that will sail down the stream of time.

Nature had endowed Bailly with the most happy memory. He did not write his discourses till he had completed them in his head. His first copy was always a clean copy. Every morning Bailly started early from his humble residence at Chaillot; he went to the Bois de Boulogne, and there, walking for many hours at a time, his powerful mind elaborated, coördinated, and robed in all the pomps of language, those high conceptions destined to charm successive generations. Biographers inform us that Crébillon composed in a similar way. And this was, according to several critics, the cause of the incorrectness, of the asperity of style, which disfigure several pieces by that tragic poet. The works of Bailly, and especially the discourses that complete the _History of Astronomy_, invalidate this explanation. I could also appeal to the elegant and pure productions of that poet whom France has just lost and weeps for. No one indeed can be ignorant of his works; Casimir Delavigne, like Bailly, never committed his verses to paper until he had worked them up in his mind to that harmonious perfection which procured for them the unanimous suffrages of all people of taste. Gentlemen, pardon this reminiscence. The heart loves to connect such names as those of Bailly and of Delavigne; those rare and glorious symbols, in whom we find united talent, virtue, and an invariable patriotism.

HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY.--LETTERS ON THE ATLANTIS OF PLATO AND ON THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF ASIA.

In 1775, Bailly published a quarto volume, entitled _History of Ancient Astronomy, from its Origin up to the Establishment of the Alexandrian School_. An analogous work for the lapse of time, comprised between the Alexandrian School and 1730, appeared in 1779, in two volumes. An additional volume appeared three years later, entitled the _History of Modern Astronomy up to the Epoch of 1782_. The fifth part of this immense composition, the _History of Indian Astronomy_, was published in 1787.

When Bailly undertook this general history of Astronomy, the science possessed nothing of the sort. Erudition had seized upon some special questions, some detailed points, but no commanding view had presided over these investigations.

Weidler's book, published in 1741, was a mere simple nomenclature of the astronomers of every age, and of every country; the dates of their birth and death; the titles of their works. The utility of this precise enumeration of dates and titles did not alter the character of the book.

Bailly sketches the plan of his work with a masterly hand in a few lines; he says, "It is interesting to transport one's self back to the times when Astronomy began; to observe how discoveries were connected together, how errors have got mixed up with truth, have delayed the knowledge of it, and retarded its progress; and, after having followed the various epochs and traversed every climate, finally to contemplate the edifice founded on the labours of successive centuries and of various nations."

This vast plan essentially led to the minute discussion and comparison of a multitude of passages both ancient and modern. If the author had mixed up these discussions with the body of the work, he would have laboured for astronomers only. If he had suppressed all discussions, the book would have interested amateurs only. To avoid this double rock, Bailly decided on writing a connected narrative with the quintessence of the facts, and to place the proofs and the discussions of the merely conjectural parts, under the appellation of explanations in separate chapters. Bailly's History, without forfeiting the character of a serious and erudite work, became accessible to the public in general, and contributed to disseminate accurate notions of Astronomy both among literary men and among general society.

When Bailly declared, in the beginning of his book, that he would go back to the very commencement of Astronomy, the reader might expect some pages of pure imagination. I know not, however, whether any body would have expected a chapter of the first volume to be entitled, _Of Antediluvian Astronomy_.

The principal conclusion to which Bailly comes, after an attentive examination of all the positive ideas that antiquity has bequeathed to us is, that we find rather the ruins than the elements of a science in the most ancient Astronomy of Chaldæa, of India, and of China.

After treating of certain ideas of Pluche, Bailly says, "The country of possibilities is immense, and although truth is contained therein, it is not often easy to distinguish it."

Words so reasonable would authorize me to inquire whether the calculations of our fellow-labourer, intended to establish the immense antiquity of the Indian Tables, are beyond all criticism. But the question has been sufficiently discussed in a passage of _The Exposition of the System of the World_, on which it would be useless to insist here. Whatever came from the pen of M. de Laplace was always marked by the stamp of reason and of evidence. In the first lines of his magnificent work, after having remarked that "the history of Astronomy forms an essential part of the history of the human mind," Bailly observes, "that it is perhaps the true measure of man's intelligence, and a proof of what he can do with time and genius." I shall allow myself to add, that no study offers to reflecting minds more striking or more curious relations.

When by measurements, in which the evidence of the method advances equally with the precision of the results, the volume of the earth is reduced to the millionth part of the volume of the sun; when the sun himself, transported to the region of the stars, takes up a very modest place among the thousands of millions of those bodies that the telescope has revealed to us; when the 38,000,000 of leagues which separate the earth from the sun, have become, by reason of their comparative smallness, a base totally insufficient for ascertaining the dimensions of the visible universe; when even the swiftness of the luminous rays (77,000 leagues per second) barely suffices for the common valuations of science; when, in short, by a chain of irresistible proofs, certain stars have retired to distances that light could not traverse in less than a million of years; we feel as if annihilated by such immensities. In assigning to man, and to the planet that he inhabits, so small a position in the material world, Astronomy seems really to have made progress only to humble us.

But if, on the other hand, we regard the subject from the opposite point of view, and reflect on the extreme feebleness of the natural means by the help of which so many great problems have been attacked and solved; if we consider that to obtain and measure the greater part of the quantities now forming the basis of astronomical computation, man has had greatly to improve the most delicate of his organs, to add immensely to the power of his eye; if we remark that it was not less requisite for him to discover methods adapted to measuring very long intervals of time, up to the precision of tenths of seconds; to combat against the most microscopic effects that constant variations of temperature produce in metals, and therefore in all instruments; to guard against the innumerable illusions that a cold or hot atmosphere, dry or humid, tranquil or agitated, impresses on the medium through which the observations have inevitably to be made; the feeble being resumes all his advantage; by the side of such wonderful labours of the mind, what signifies the weakness, the fragility of our body; what signify the dimensions of the planet, our residence, the grain of sand on which it has happened to us to appear for a few moments!

The thousands of questions on which Astronomy has thrown its dazzling light belong to two entirely distinct categories; some offered themselves naturally to the mind, and man had only to seek the means for solving them; others, according to the beautiful expression of Pliny, were enveloped in the majesty of nature! When Bailly lays down in his book these two kinds of problems, it is with the firmness, the depth, of a consummate astronomer; and when he shows their importance, their immensity, it is always with the talent of a writer of the highest order; it is sometimes with a bewitching eloquence. If in the beautiful work we are alluding to, Astronomy unavoidably assigns to man an imperceptible place in the material world, she assigns him, on the other hand, a vast share in the intellectual world. The writings which, supported by the invincible deductions of science, thus elevate man in his own eyes, will find grateful readers in all climes and times.

In 1775, Bailly sent the first volume of his history to Voltaire. In thanking him for his present, the illustrious old man addressed to the author one of those letters that he alone could write, in which flattering and enlivening sentences were combined without effort with high reasoning powers. "I have many thanks to return you, (said the Patriarch of Ferney,) for having on the same day received a large book on medicine and yours, while I was still ill; I have not opened the first, I have already read the second almost entirely, and feel better."

Voltaire, indeed, had read Bailly's work pen in hand, and he proposed to the illustrious astronomer some queries, which proved both his infinite perspicacity, and wonderful variety of knowledge. Bailly then felt the necessity of developing some ideas which in his _History of Ancient Astronomy_ were only accessories to his principal subject. This was the object of the volume that he published in 1776, under the title of _Letters on the Origin of the Sciences and of the People of Asia, addressed to M. de Voltaire_. The author modestly announced that "to lead the reader by the interest of the style to the interest of the question discussed," he would place at the head of his work three letters from the author of _Merope_, and he protested against the idea that he had been induced to play with paradoxes.

According to Bailly, the present nations of Asia are heirs of an anterior people, who understood Astronomy perfectly. Those Chinese, those Hindoos, so renowned for their learning, would thus have been mere depositaries; we should have to deprive them of the title of inventors. Certain astronomical facts, found in the annals of those southern nations, appear to have belonged to a higher latitude. By these means we discover the true site on the globe of the primitive people, proving against the received opinion that learning came southward from the north.

Bailly also found that the ancient fables, considered physically, appeared to belong to the northern regions of the earth.

In 1779, Bailly published a second collection, forming a sequel to the former, and entitled _Letters on the Atlantis of Plato, and on the Ancient History of Asia_.

Voltaire died before these new letters could be communicated to him. Bailly did not think that this circumstance ought to make him change the form of the discussion already employed in the former series; it is still Voltaire whom he addresses.

The philosopher of Ferney thought it strange that there should be no knowledge of this ancient people, who, according to Bailly, had instructed the Indians. To answer this difficulty, the celebrated astronomer undertakes to prove that some nations have disappeared, without their existence being known to us by any thing beyond tradition. He cites five of these, and in the first rank the Atlantidæ.

Aristotle said that he thought Atlantis was a fiction of Plato's: "He who created it also destroyed it, like the walls that Homer built on the shores of Troy, and then made them disappear." Bailly does not join in this skepticism. According to him, Plato spoke seriously to the Athenians of a learned, polished people, but destroyed and forgotten. Only, he totally repudiates the idea of the Canaries being the remains of the ancient country of the Atlantidæ, and now engulfed. Bailly rather places that nation at Spitzbergen, Greenland, or Nova Zembla, whose climate may have changed. We should also have to seek for the Garden of the Hesperides near the Pole; in short, the fable of the Phoenix may have arisen in the Gulf of the Obi, in a region where we must suppose the sun to have been annually absent during sixty-five days.