Voltaire called Maupertuis, my amiable master in thinking, marquis of the polar circle, dear flattener out of the world and Cassini, and even, flattery supreme, Sir Isaac Maupertuis; he wrote him: "Only the king of Prussia do I put on a level with you; he only lacks being a geometer." But soon the scene changes, he no longer speaks of deifying him, as in days of yore the Argonauts, or of calling down from Olympus the council of the gods to contemplate his works, but of chaining him up in a madhouse. He speaks no longer of his sublime mind, but of his despotic pride, plated with very little science and much absurdity.
I care not to relate these comico-heroic combats; but permit me some reflections on two of Voltaire's verses. In his 'Discourse on Moderation' (no question of moderation in praise and criticism), the poet has written:
You have confirmed in regions drear
What Newton discerned without going abroad.
These two verses (which replace the hyperbolic praises of the first period) are very unjust, and doubtless Voltaire was too enlightened not to know it.
Then, only those discoveries were esteemed which could be made without leaving one's house.
To-day, it would rather be theory that one would make light of.
This is to misunderstand the aim of science.
Is nature governed by caprice, or does harmony rule there? That is the question. It is when it discloses to us this harmony that science is beautiful and so worthy to be cultivated. But whence can come to us this revelation, if not from the accord of a theory with experiment? To seek whether this accord exists or if it fails, this therefore is our aim. Consequently these two terms, which we must compare, are as indispensable the one as the other. To neglect one for the other would be nonsense. Isolated, theory would be empty, experiment would be blind; each would be useless and without interest.
Maupertuis therefore deserves his share of glory. Truly, it will not equal that of Newton, who had received the spark divine; nor even that of his collaborator Clairaut. Yet it is not to be despised, because his work was necessary, and if France, outstripped by England in the seventeenth century, has so well taken her revenge in the century following, it is not alone to the genius of Clairauts, d'Alemberts, Laplaces that she owes it; it is also to the long patience of the Maupertuis and the La Condamines.
We reach what may be called the second heroic period of geodesy. France is torn within. All Europe is armed against her; it would seem that these gigantic combats might absorb all her forces. Far from it; she still has them for the service of science. The men of that time recoiled before no enterprise, they were men of faith.