M. Berville; but he will permit me to express no small satisfaction at finding that, after all, he confirms almost every opinion which I had ventured to pronounce upon Voltaire, the subject to which his remarks are almost exclusively confined. As for the want of novelty, nothing can be more perilous than running after discoveries on the merits of works that have been before the world for almost a century, and on which the most unlimited discussion has taken place. It may, however, perhaps be thought that, in one respect, the Life of Voltaire differs from its predecessors. There is certainly no bias either of nation, or of party, or of sect shewn in the opinions given whether of the personal merits or the works of that great man. On one subject M. Berville evidently has entirely misapprehended me, when he says I have expressed an opinion different from Clairaut's on Voltaire's scientific capacity. Clairaut's judgment was confined apparently to subjects of pure mathematics; and I have only ventured to wish that either it had been expressly so limited, or that it had been so understood by Voltaire, whose capacity for experimental philosophy, though not for the mathematics, I ventured to consider was very great. Of this I have given the proofs, and M. Berville considers them as an important addition to what had hitherto been said of Voltaire. Respecting the Life of Rousseau, his opinion is much more severe; but on this subject I never can hope to agree with a writer who manifestly regards that individual as a great benefactor of his species, and as having waged a war against tyranny equally successful with Voltaire's against priestcraft. Rousseau's political works are wholly beneath contempt. No proofs are required to shew the ignorance and even incapacity of a writer whose notions of the representative system. -the greatest political improvement of modern times-are such, that he holds a people to be enslaved during the whole interval between one election and another-a dogma which makes it utterly impossible for any free state to exist whose inhabitants amount to more than fifteen hundred or two thousand. But, in truth, it is not as a political writer that Rousseau now retains any portion of the reputation which he once enjoyed. His fame rests upon a paradoxical discourse against all knowledge, a second-rate novel, and an admirably written, but degrading, and even disgusting autobiography. The critic is very indignant at the grave censure which I pronounced on this last work, and on the vices by which it showed the author to have been contaminated. I deliberately re-affirm my opinion as formerly expressed on the subject; nor can I imagine a more reprehensible use of faculties, such as Rousseau certainly possessed, than the composition of a narrative, some parts of which cannot be read without horror and disgust by any person whose mind is ordinarily pure. The Lives in the present volume require little prefatory remark, because they embrace hardly any controversial matter. But I venture to advise the reader, that, even if prejudiced against the pretensions, or, it may be, against the practical conclusions, of the Political Economists, he should not turn from the subject of Adam Smith; and that, even though averse to geometrical studies, he should not be scared by the mathematical discussions connected with D'Alembert. For he will find that the subjects on which the great and well-established fame of Smith is founded have not been treated with any of the prejudices wherewith the Political Economists have been charged; and he will also experience no difficulty in apprehending the truths which it is the principal purpose of D'Alembert's Life to recommend, in so far as regards the important subject of mathematical pursuits, and the gratification which they are fitted to bestow. This last hope is one which I have peculiarly at heart. Nor do I think that I should have been induced to undertake the labour of these two volumes by any other consideration than the desire of recommending the study of the mathematics in both the great branches of the Greek Geometry and the modern Analysis-recommending it by a contemplation of such lives as those of Simson and D'Alembert. Château Eleanor-Louise, Provence, 5th January, 1846 NOTE. Upon my return to this country at the opening of the Session, I read over the Life of Adam Smith, and the Analysis of his great work, which had been written last autumn, at a time when I never could have expected the present practical discussion of the Corn Laws to come on before the work should be published. The observations delivered on that question, and the whole doctrine of Free Trade, were, therefore, prepared without any view to the controversy now going on; and I fear their tenor will not give much satisfaction to any party. My opinion is well known upon the subject; and that I neither expect any thing like the good which some hope, nor apprehend any thing like the evil which others dread, from the proposed alterations in the law, while of those alterations I highly approve. But I have resolved to publish the Life and the Analytical View, without the least alteration or addition, exactly as it was written during the calm of the last year; giving it as a treatise upon a subject of science, composed with only the desire to discover or to expound the truth, and without any view to the interests of any Party. I am truly happy to announce my hope that a fuller Life of Sir J. Banks, being in such excellent hands as those of Mr. Dawson Turner, of Great Yarmouth, will be finished by that much and justly respected gentleman. London, March 21st, 1846. |