“_Je me suis proposé de grands desseins dans ce petit ouvrage_,” as
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre says in the preface to his pathetic story of
_Paul et Virginie_. I have sought to present to the great
English-speaking world the work of a genius hitherto only known to a few
men of science, and not well known, even among the people of France, for
whose credit he has done so much. In placing before the readers of this
translation his book—small of size but great in matter as it is—I feel
that I have accomplished an easy task, but one of real importance. I
have been asked, as Corresponding Member for the United States of the
Société des Ingénieurs Civils de France, to communicate to my colleagues
scientific and professional memoirs and whatever may be of interest to
them—“_en un mot, que nous resserrions les liens qui font des ingénieurs
en général une seule famille_.” That were a pleasant task; but a grander
and a more agreeable one still is that of bringing “nearer in heart and
thought” the members of that still larger community, the men of science
of the world, and of weaving still more firmly and closely those bonds
of kindly thought and feeling which are growing continually more
numerous and stronger as the nations are brought to see that humanity is
larger and more important than political divisions, and that the labors
of educated men and of the guiding minds in the great industries are
constantly doing more to promote a true brotherhood of mankind than ever
have, or ever can, the greatest statesmen.
When the wonderful intellectual accomplishments of men like the elder
Sadi Carnot become known and appreciated by the world, much more will
have been accomplished in this direction. It is perhaps from this point
of view that the importance of such work will be most fully recognized.
When the little treatise which is here for the first time published in
English becomes familiar to those for whom it is intended, it will be,
to many at least, a matter of surprise no less than pleasure to discover
that France has produced a writer on this now familiar subject whose
inspiration anticipated many of the principles that those founders of
the modern science, Rankine and Clausius, worked out through the tedious
and difficult methods of the higher mathematics, and which were hailed
by their contemporaries as marvellous discoveries.