almost irresistible ascendency. One day--all Burgundy has preserved the
remembrance of it--on the occasion of a levy of three hundred thousand
men, he made the words honour, country, glory, ring so eloquently, he
induced so many voluntary enrolments, that the ballot was not deemed
necessary. At the command of the orator the contingent assigned to the
chief town of the Yonne formed in order, assembled together within the
very enclosure of the Assembly, and marched forthwith to the frontier.
Unfortunately these struggles of the forum, in which so many noble lives
then exercised themselves, were far from having always a real
importance. Ridiculous, absurd, and burlesque motions injured
incessantly the inspirations of a pure, sincere, and enlightened
patriotism. The popular society of Auxerre would furnish us, in case of
necessity, with more than one example of those lamentable contrasts.
Thus I might say that in the very same apartment wherein Fourier knew
how to excite the honourable sentiments which I have with pleasure
recalled to mind, he had on another occasion to contend with a certain
orator, perhaps of good intentions, but assuredly a bad astronomer, who,
wishing to escape, said he, from _the good pleasure_ of municipal
rulers, proposed that the names of the north, east, south, and west
quarters should be assigned by lot to the different parts of the town of
Auxerre.
Literature, the fine arts, and the sciences appeared for a moment to
flourish under the auspicious influence of the French Revolution.
Observe, for example, with what grandeur of conception the reformation
of weights and measures was planned; what geometers, what astronomers,
what eminent philosophers presided over every department of this noble
undertaking! Alas! frightful revolutions in the interior of the country
soon saddened this magnificent spectacle. The sciences could not prosper
in the midst of the desperate contest of factions. They would have
blushed to owe any obligations to the men of blood, whose blind passions
immolated a Saron, a Bailly, and a Lavoisière.
A few months after the 9th Thermidor, the Convention being desirous of
diffusing throughout the country ideas of order, civilization, and
internal prosperity, resolved upon organizing a system of public
instruction, but a difficulty arose in finding professors. The members
of the corps of instruction had become officers of artillery, of
engineering, or of the staff, and were combating the enemies of France
at the frontiers. Fortunately at this epoch of intellectual exaltation,
nothing seemed impossible. Professors were wanting; it was resolved
without delay to create some, and the Normal School sprung into
existence. Fifteen hundred citizens of all ages, despatched from the
principal district towns, assembled together, not to study in all their
ramifications the different branches of human knowledge, but in order to
learn the art of teaching under the greatest masters.
Fourier was one of these fifteen hundred pupils. It will, no doubt,
excite some surprise that he was elected at St. Florentine, and that
Auxerre appeared insensible to the honour of being represented at Paris
by the most illustrious of her children. But this indifference will be
readily understood. The elaborate scaffolding of calumny which it has
served to support will fall to the ground as soon as I recall to mind,
that after the 9th Thermidor the capital, and especially the provinces,
became a prey to a blind and disorderly reaction, as all political
reactions invariably are; that crime (the crime of having changed
opinions--it was nothing less hideous) usurped the place of justice;
that excellent citizens, that pure, moderate, and conscientious patriots
were daily massacred by hired bands of assassins in presence of whom the
inhabitants remained mute with fear. Such are, Gentlemen, the formidable
influences which for a moment deprived Fourier of the suffrages of his
countrymen; and caricatured, as a partisan of Robespierre, the
individual whom St. Just, making allusion to his sweet and persuasive
eloquence, styled a _patriot in music_; who was so often thrown into
prison by the decemvirs; who, at the very height of the Reign of Terror,
offered before the Revolutionary Tribunal the assistance of his
admirable talents to the mother of Marshal Davoust, accused of the crime
of having at that unrelenting epoch sent some money to the emigrants;
who had the incredible boldness to shut up at the inn of Tonnerre an
agent of the Committee of Public Safety, into the secret of whose
mission he penetrated, and thus obtained time to warn an honourable
citizen that he was about to be arrested; who, finally, attaching
himself personally to the sanguinary proconsul before whom every one
trembled in Yonne, made him pass for a madman, and obtained his recall!
You see, Gentlemen, some of the acts of patriotism, of devotion, and of
humanity which signalized the early years of Fourier. They were, you
have seen, repaid with ingratitude. But ought we in reality to be
astonished at it? To expect gratitude from the man who cannot make an
avowal of his feelings without danger, would be to shut one's eyes to
the frailty of human nature, and to expose one's self to frequent
disappointments.
In the Normal School of the Convention, discussion from time to time
succeeded ordinary lectures. On those days an interchange of characters
was effected; the pupils interrogated the professors. Some words
pronounced by Fourier at one of those curious and useful meetings
sufficed to attract attention towards him. Accordingly, as soon as a
necessity was felt to create Masters of Conference, all eyes were turned
towards the pupil of St. Florentine. The precision, the clearness, and
the elegance of his lectures soon procured for him the unanimous
applause of the fastidious and numerous audience which was confided to
him.
When he attained the height of his scientific and literary glory,
Fourier used to look back with pleasure upon the year 1794, and upon the
sublime efforts which the French nation then made for the purpose of
organizing a Corps of Public Instruction. If he had ventured, the title
of Pupil of the original Normal School would have been beyond doubt that
which he would have assumed by way of preference. Gentlemen, that school
perished of cold, of wretchedness, and of hunger, and not, whatever
people may say, from certain defects of organization which time and
reflection would have easily rectified. Notwithstanding its short
existence, it imparted to scientific studies quite a new direction which
has been productive of the most important results. In supporting this
opinion at some length, I shall acquit myself of a task which Fourier
would certainly have imposed upon me, if he could have suspected, that
with just and eloquent eulogiums of his character and his labours there
should mingle within the walls of this apartment, and even emanate from
the mouth of one of his successors, sharp critiques of his beloved
Normal School.
It is to the Normal School that we must inevitably ascend if we would
desire to ascertain the earliest public teaching of _descriptive
Geometry_, that fine creation of the genius of Monge. It is from this
source that it has passed almost without modification to the Polytechnic
School, to foundries, to manufactories, and the most humble workshops.
The establishment of the Normal School accordingly indicates the
commencement of a veritable revolution in the study of pure mathematics;
with it demonstrations, methods, and important theories, buried in
academical collections, appeared for the first time before the pupils,
and encouraged them to recast upon new bases the works destined for
instruction.
With some rare exceptions, the philosophers engaged in the cultivation
of science constituted formerly in France a class totally distinct from
that of the professors. By appointing the first geometers, the first
philosophers, and the first naturalists of the world to be professors,
the Convention threw new lustre upon the profession of teaching, the
advantageous influence of which is felt in the present day. In the
opinion of the public at large a title which a Lagrange, a Laplace, a
Monge, a Berthollet, had borne, became a proper match to the finest
titles. If under the empire, the Polytechnic School counted among its
active professors councillors of state, ministers, and the president of
the senate, you must look for the explanation of this fact in the
impulse given by the Normal School.
You see in the ancient great colleges, professors concealed in some
degree behind their portfolios, reading as from a pulpit, amid the
indifference and inattention of their pupils, discourses prepared
beforehand with great labour, and which reappear every year in the same
form. Nothing of this kind existed at the Normal School; oral lessons
alone were there permitted. The authorities even went so far as to
require of the illustrious savans appointed to the task of instruction
the formal promise never to recite any lectures which they might have
learned by heart. From that time the chair has become a tribune where
the professor, identified, so to speak, with his audience, sees in
their looks, in their gestures, in their countenance, sometimes the
necessity for proceeding at greater speed, sometimes, on the contrary,
the necessity of retracing his steps, of awakening the attention by some
incidental observations, of clothing in a new form the thought which,
when first expressed, had left some doubts in the minds of his audience.
And do not suppose that the beautiful impromptu lectures with which the
amphitheatre of the Normal School resounded, remained unknown to the
public. Short-hand writers paid by the State reported them. The sheets,
after being revised by the professors, were sent to the fifteen hundred
pupils, to the members of Convention, to the consuls and agents of the
Republic in foreign countries, to all governors of districts. There was
in this something certainly of profusion compared with the parsimonious
and mean habits of our time. Nobody, however, would concur in this
reproach, however slight it may appear, if I were permitted to point out
in this very apartment an illustrious Academician, whose mathematical
genius was awakened by the lectures of the Normal School in an obscure
district town!
The necessity of demonstrating the important services, ignored in the
present day, for which the dissemination of the sciences is indebted to
the first Normal School, has induced me to dwell at greater length on
the subject than I intended. I hope to be pardoned; the example in any
case will not be contagious. Eulogiums of the past, you know, Gentlemen,
are no longer fashionable. Every thing which is said, every thing which
is printed, induces us to suppose that the world is the creation of
yesterday. This opinion, which allows to each a part more or less
brilliant in the cosmogonic drama, is under the safeguard of too many
vanities to have any thing to fear from the efforts of logic.
I have already stated that the brilliant success of Fourier at the
Normal School assigned to him a distinguished place among the persons
whom nature has endowed in the highest degree with the talent of public
tuition. Accordingly, he was not forgotten by the founders of the
Polytechnic School. Attached to that celebrated establishment, first
with the title of Superintendent of Lectures on Fortification,
afterwards appointed to deliver a course of lectures on Analysis,
Fourier has left there a venerated name, and the reputation of a
professor distinguished by clearness, method, and erudition; I shall add
even the reputation of a professor full of grace, for our colleague has
proved that this kind of merit may not be foreign to the teaching of
mathematics.
The lectures of Fourier have not been collected together. The Journal of
the Polytechnic School contains only one paper by him, a memoir upon the
"principle of virtual velocities." This memoir, which probably had
served for the text of a lecture, shows that the secret of our
celebrated professor's great success consisted in the combination of
abstract truths, of interesting applications, and of historical details
little known, and derived, a thing so rare in our days, from original
sources.
We have now arrived at the epoch when the peace of Leoben brought back
to the metropolis the principal ornaments of our armies. Then the
professors and the pupils of the Polytechnic School had sometimes the
distinguished honour of sitting in their amphitheatres beside Generals
Desaix and Bonaparte. Every thing indicated to them then an active
participation in the events which each foresaw, and which in fact were
not long of occurring.
Notwithstanding the precarious condition of Europe, the Directory
decided upon denuding the country of its best troops, and launching them
upon an adventurous expedition. The five chiefs of the Republic were
then desirous of removing from Paris the conqueror of Italy, of thereby
putting an end to the popular demonstrations of which he everywhere
formed the object, and which sooner or later would become a real danger.
On the other hand, the illustrious general did not dream merely of the
momentary conquest of Egypt; he wished to restore to that country its
ancient splendour; he wished to extend its cultivation, to improve its
system of irrigation, to create new branches of industry, to open to
commerce numerous outlets, to stretch out a helping hand to the
unfortunate inhabitants, to rescue them from the galling yoke under
which they had groaned for ages, in a word, to bestow upon them without
delay all the benefits of European civilization. Designs of such
magnitude could not have been accomplished with the mere _personnel_ of
an ordinary army. It was necessary to appeal to science, to literature,
and to the fine arts; it was necessary to ask the coöperation of several
men of judgment and of experience. Monge and Berthollet, both members of
the Institute and Professors in the Polytechnic School, became, with a
view to this object, the principal recruiting aids to the chief of the
expedition. Were our colleagues really acquainted with the object of
this expedition? I dare not reply in the affirmative; but I know at all
events that they were not permitted to divulge it. We are going to a
distant country; we shall embark at Toulon; we shall be constantly with
you; General Bonaparte will command the army, such was in form and
substance the limited amount of confidential information which had been
imperiously traced out to them. Upon the faith of words so vague, with
the chances of a naval battle, with the English hulks in perspective, go
in the present day and endeavour to enroll a father of a family, a
savant already known by useful labours and placed in some honourable
position, an artist in possession of the esteem and confidence of the
public, and I am much mistaken if you obtain any thing else than
refusals; but in 1798, France had hardly emerged from a terrible crisis,
during which her very existence was frequently at stake. Who, besides,
had not encountered imminent personal danger? Who had not seen with his
own eyes enterprises of a truly desperate nature brought to a fortunate
issue? Is any thing more wanted to explain that adventurous character,
that absence of all care for the morrow, which appears to have been one
of the most distinguishing features of the epoch of the Directory.
Fourier accepted then without hesitation the proposals which his
colleagues brought to him in the name of the Commander-in-Chief; he
quitted the agreeable duties of a professor of the Polytechnic School,
to go--he knew not where, to do--he knew not what.
Chance placed Fourier during the voyage in the vessel in which Kléber
sailed. The friendship which the philosopher and the warrior vowed to
each other from that moment was not without some influence upon the
events of which Egypt was the theatre after the departure of Napoleon.
He who signed his orders of the day, the _Member of the Institute,
Commander-in-Chief of the Army in the East_, could not fail to place an
Academy among the means of regenerating the ancient kingdom of the
Pharaohs. The valiant army which he commanded had barely conquered at
Cairo, on the occasion of the memorable battle of the Pyramids, when the
Institute of Egypt sprung into existence. It consisted of forty-eight
members, divided into four sections. Monge had the honour of being the
first president. As at Paris, Bonaparte belonged to the section of
Mathematics. The situation of perpetual secretary, the filling up of
which was left to the free choice of the Society, was unanimously
assigned to Fourier.
You have seen the celebrated geometer discharge the same duty at the
Academy of Sciences; you have appreciated his liberality of mind, his
enlightened benevolence, his unvarying affability, his straightforward
and conciliatory disposition: add in imagination to so many rare
qualities the activity which youth, which health can alone give, and you
will have again conjured into existence the Secretary of the Institute
of Egypt; and yet the portrait which I have attempted to draw of him
would grow pale beside the original.
Upon the banks of the Nile, Fourier devoted himself to assiduous
researches on almost every branch of knowledge which the vast plan of
the Institute embraced. The _Decade_ and the _Courier of Egypt_ will
acquaint the reader with the titles of his different labours. I find in
these journals a memoir upon the general solution of algebraic
equations; researches on the methods of elimination; the demonstration
of a new theorem of algebra; a memoir upon the indeterminate analysis;
studies on general mechanics; a technical and historical work upon the
aqueduct which conveys the waters of the Nile to the Castle of Cairo;
reflections upon the Oases; the plan of statistical researches to be
undertaken with respect to the state of Egypt; programme of an intended
exploration of the site of the ancient Memphis, and of the whole extent
of burying-places; a descriptive account of the revolutions and manners
of Egypt, from the time of its conquest by Selim.
I find also in the Egyptian _Decade_, that, on the first complementary
day of the year VI., Fourier communicated to the Institute the
description of a machine designed to promote irrigation, and which was
to be driven by the power of wind.
This work, so far removed from the ordinary current of the ideas of our
colleague, has not been printed. It would very naturally find a place in
a work of which the Expedition to Egypt might again furnish the subject,
notwithstanding the many beautiful publications which it has already
called into existence. It would be a description of the manufactories of
steel, of arms, of powder, of cloth, of machines, and of instruments of
every kind which our army had to prepare for the occasion. If, during
our infancy, the expedients which Robinson Crusoe practised in order to
escape from the romantic dangers which he had incessantly to encounter,
excite our interest in a lively degree, how, in mature age, could we
regard with indifference a handful of Frenchmen thrown upon the
inhospitable shores of Africa, without any possible communication with
the mother country, obliged to contend at once with the elements and
with formidable armies, destitute of food, of clothing, of arms, and of
ammunition, and yet supplying every want by the force of genius!
The long route which I have yet to traverse, will hardly allow me to add
a few words relative to the administrative services of the illustrious
geometer. Appointed French Commissioner at the Divan of Cairo, he
became the official medium between the General-in-Chief and every
Egyptian who might have to complain of an attack against his person, his
property, his morals, his habits, or his creed. An invariable sauvity of
manner, a scrupulous regard for prejudices to oppose which directly
would have been vain, an inflexible sentiment of justice, had given him
an ascendency over the Mussulman population, which the precepts of the
Koran could not lead any one to hope for, and which powerfully
contributed to the maintenance of friendly relations between the
inhabitants of Cairo and the French soldiers. Fourier was especially
held in veneration by the Cheiks and the Ulémas. A single anecdote will
serve to show that this sentiment was the offspring of genuine
gratitude.
The Emir Hadgey, or Prince of the Caravan, who had been nominated by
General Bonaparte upon his arrival in Cairo, escaped during the campaign
of Syria. There existed strong grounds at the time for supposing that
four _Cheiks Ulémas_ had rendered themselves accomplices of the treason.
Upon his return to Egypt, Bonaparte confided the investigation of this
grave affair to Fourier. "Do not," said he, "submit half measures to me.
You have to pronounce judgment upon high personages: we must either cut
off their heads or invite them to dinner." On the day following that on
which this conversation took place, the four Cheiks dined with the
General-in-Chief. By obeying the inspirations of his heart, Fourier did
not perform merely an act of humanity; it was moreover one of excellent
policy. Our learned colleague, M. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, to whom I am
indebted for this anecdote, has stated in fact that Soleyman and
Fayoumi, the principal of the Egyptian chiefs, whose punishment, thanks
to our colleague, was so happily transformed into a banquet, seized
every occasion of extolling among their countrymen the generosity of the
French.
Fourier did not display less ability when our generals confided
diplomatic missions to him. It is to his tact and urbanity that our army
is indebted for an offensive and defensive treaty of alliance with
Mourad Bey. Justly proud of this result, Fourier omitted to make known
the details of the negotiation. This is deeply to be regretted, for the
plenipotentiary of Mourad was a woman, the same Sitty Nefiçah whom
Kléber has immortalized by proclaiming her _beneficence_, _her noble
character_, in the bulletin of Heliopolis, and who moreover was already
celebrated from one extremity of Asia to the other, in consequence of
the bloody revolutions which her unparalleled beauty had excited among
the Mamelukes.
The incomparable victory which Kléber gained over the army of the Grand
Vizier did not damp the energy of the Janissaries, who had seized upon
Cairo while the war was raging at Heliopolis. They defended themselves
from house to house with heroic courage. The besieged had to choose
between the entire destruction of the city and an honourable
capitulation. The latter alternative was adopted. Fourier, charged, as
usual, with the negotiations, conducted them to a favourable issue; but
on this occasion the treaty was not discussed, agreed to, and signed
within the mysterious precincts of a harem, upon downy couches, under
the shade of balmy groves. The preliminary discussions were held in a
house half ruined by bullets and grape-shot; in the centre of the
quarter of which the insurgents valiantly disputed the possession with
our soldiers; before even it would have been possible to agree to the
basis of a treaty of a few hours. Accordingly, when Fourier was
preparing to celebrate the welcome of the Turkish commissioner
conformably to oriental usages, a great number of musket-shots were
fired from the house in front, and a ball passed through the coffee-pot
which he was holding in his hand. Without calling in question the
bravery of any person, do you not think, Gentlemen, that if diplomatists
were usually placed in equally perilous positions, the public would have
less reason to complain of their proverbial slowness?