All that long groping is science. Cuvier was mistaken yesterday, Lagrange the day before yesterday, Leibnitz before Lagrange, Gassendi before Leibnitz, Cardan before Gassendi, Cornelius Agrippa before Cardan, Averroes before Agrippa, Plotinus before Averroes, Artemidorus Daldian before Plotinus, Posidonius before Artemidorus, Democritus before Posidonius, Empedocles before Democritus, Carneades before Empedocles, Plato before Carneades, Pherecydes before Plato, Pittacus before Pherecydes, Thales before Pittacus, and before Thales Zoroaster, and before Zoroaster Sanchoniathon, and before Sanchoniathon Hermes,—Hermes, which signifies science, as Orpheus signifies art. Oh, wonderful marvel, this heap swarming with dreams which engender the real! Oh, sacred errors, slow, blind, and sainted mothers of truth!
Some savants, such as Kepler, Euler, Geoffroy St. Hilaire, Arago, have brought into science nothing but light; they are rare.
At times science is an obstacle to science. The savants give way to scruples and cavil at study. Pliny is scandalized at Hipparchus; Hipparchus, with the aid of an imperfect astrolabe, tries to count the stars and to name them,—an impropriety toward God, says Pliny ("Ausus rem Deo improbam").
To count the stars is to commit a wickedness toward God. This accusation, started by Pliny against Hipparchus, is continued by the Inquisition against Campanella.
Science is the asymptote of truth. It approaches unceasingly and never touches. Nevertheless it has every greatness. It has will, precision, enthusiasm, profound attention, penetration, shrewdness, strength, patience by concatenation, permanent watching for phenomena, the ardour of progress, and even flashes of bravery,—witness La Pérouse; witness Pilastre des Rosiers; witness John Franklin; witness Victor Jacquemont; witness Livingstone: witness Mazet; witness, at this very hour, Nadar.
But science is series. It proceeds by tests heaped one above the other, and the thick obscurity of which rises slowly to the level of truth.
Nothing like it in art. Art is not successive. All art is ensemble.
Let us sum up these few pages.
Hippocrates is outrun, Archimedes is outrun, Aratus is outrun, Avicennus is outrun, Paracelsus is outrun, Nicholas Flamel is outrun, Ambrose Paré is outrun, Vésale is outrun, Copernicus is outrun, Galileo is outrun, Newton is outrun, Clairaut is outrun, Lavoisier is outrun, Montgolfier is outrun, Laplace is outrun. Pindar not, Phidias not.
Pascal the savant is outrun; Pascal the writer is not.