Part 10 (1/2)
Weidler's book, published in 1741, was a e, and of every country; the dates of their birth and death; the titles of their works The utility of this precise enumeration of dates and titles did not alter the character of the book
Bailly sketches the plan of his ith ato transport one's self back to the tian; to observe how discoveries were connected together, how errors have got e of it, and retarded its progress; and, after having followed the various epochs and traversed every climate, finally to contemplate the edifice founded on the labours of successive centuries and of various nations”
This vast plan essentially led to the es both ancient and modern If the author had mixed up these discussions with the body of the work, he would have laboured for astronomers only If he had suppressed all discussions, the book would have interested amateurs only To avoid this double rock, Bailly decided on writing a connected narrative with the quintessence of the facts, and to place the proofs and the discussions of the merely conjectural parts, under the appellation of explanations in separate chapters Bailly's History, without forfeiting the character of a serious and erudite work, becaeneral, and contributed to disse literary eneral society
When Bailly declared, in the beginning of his book, that he would go back to the very coes of pure iination I know not, however, whether any body would have expected a chapter of the first volume to be entitled, _Of Antediluvian Astronomy_
The principal conclusion to which Bailly comes, after an attentive examination of all the positive ideas that antiquity has bequeathed to us is, that we find rather the ruins than the elements of a science in the most ancient Astrono of certain ideas of Pluche, Bailly says, ”The country of possibilities is ih truth is contained therein, it is not often easy to distinguish it”
Words so reasonable would authorize me to inquire whether the calculations of our fellow-labourer, intended to establish the immense antiquity of the Indian Tables, are beyond all criticism But the question has been sufficiently discussed in a passage of _The Exposition of the System of the World_, on which it would be useless to insist here Whatever came from the pen of M de Laplace was always marked by the stanificent work, after having remarked that ”the history of Astronomy forms an essential part of the history of the human mind,” Bailly observes, ”that it is perhaps the true ence, and a proof of what he can do with tienius” I shall allowor more curious relations
When by measurements, in which the evidence of the method advances equally with the precision of the results, the volume of the earth is reduced to the millionth part of the voluion of the stars, takes up a verythe thousands of millions of those bodies that the telescope has revealed to us; when the 38,000,000 of leagues which separate the earth from the sun, have become, by reason of their comparative s the dimensions of the visible universe; when even the swiftness of the luues per second) barely suffices for the common valuations of science; when, in short, by a chain of irresistible proofs, certain stars have retired to distances that light could not traverse in less than a million of years; we feel as if annihilated by such i to man, and to the planet that he inhabits, so small a position in the ress only to huard the subject from the opposite point of view, and reflect on the extreme feebleness of the natural reat problems have been attacked and solved; if we consider that to obtain andthe basis of astronoreatly to ians, to add immensely to the power of his eye; if we remark that it was not less requisite for hi intervals of tiainst the most microscopic effects that constant variations of temperature produce in ainst the innumerable illusions that a cold or hot atitated, ih which the observations have inevitably to be e; by the side of such wonderful labours of the ility of our body; what signify the dirain of sand on which it has happened to us to appear for a few moments!
The thousands of questions on which Astrono to two entirely distinct categories; some offered themselves naturally to thethe to the beautiful expression of Pliny, were enveloped in the majesty of nature! When Bailly lays down in his book these two kinds of problems, it is with the firmness, the depth, of a consummate astronomer; and when he shows their importance, their ihest order; it is so eloquence If in the beautiful e are alluding to, Astronons to ns him, on the other hand, a vast share in the intellectual world The writings which, supported by the invincible deductions of science, thus elevate rateful readers in all climes and times
In 1775, Bailly sent the first volu him for his present, the illustrious old man addressed to the author one of those letters that he alone could write, in which flattering and enlivening sentences were co powers ”I have many thanks to return you, (said the Patriarch of Ferney,) for having on the sae book on medicine and yours, while I was still ill; I have not opened the first, I have already read the second almost entirely, and feel better”
Voltaire, indeed, had read Bailly's work pen in hand, and he proposed to the illustrious astronomer some queries, which proved both his infinite perspicacity, and wonderful variety of knowledge Bailly then felt the necessity of developing some ideas which in his _History of Ancient Astronomy_ were only accessories to his principal subject This was the object of the volume that he published in 1776, under the title of _Letters on the Origin of the Sciences and of the People of Asia, addressed to M de Voltaire_ The author modestly announced that ”to lead the reader by the interest of the style to the interest of the question discussed,” he would place at the head of his work three letters froainst the idea that he had been induced to play with paradoxes
According to Bailly, the present nations of Asia are heirs of an anterior people, who understood Astronomy perfectly Those Chinese, those Hindoos, so renowned for their learning, would thus have been mere depositaries; we should have to deprive them of the title of inventors
Certain astronomical facts, found in the annals of those southern nations, appear to have belonged to a higher latitude By these lobe of the priainst the received opinion that learning came southward from the north
Bailly also found that the ancient fables, considered physically, appeared to belong to the northern regions of the earth
In 1779, Bailly published a second collection, for a sequel to the former, and entitled _Letters on the Atlantis of Plato, and on the Ancient History of Asia_
Voltaire died before these new letters could be communicated to hiht to e the form of the discussion already employed in the former series; it is still Voltaire whoht it strange that there should be no knowledge of this ancient people, who, according to Bailly, had instructed the Indians To answer this difficulty, the celebrated astronomer undertakes to prove that so known to us by any thing beyond tradition
He cites five of these, and in the first rank the Atlantidae
Aristotle said that he thought Atlantis was a fiction of Plato's: ”He who created it also destroyed it, like the walls that Homer built on the shores of Troy, and then made them disappear” Bailly does not join in this skepticis to him, Plato spoke seriously to the Athenians of a learned, polished people, but destroyed and forgotten
Only, he totally repudiates the idea of the Canaries being the reulfed Bailly rather places that nation at Spitzbergen, Greenland, or Nova Zeed We should also have to seek for the Garden of the Hesperides near the Pole; in short, the fable of the Phoenix ion where wesixty-five days
It is evident, in ularity of his own conclusions, and fears that his readers ard them as jokes He therefore exclaihts which I did not believe to be true” Let us add that no effort is painful to him Bailly calls successively to his aid astronoy, the syste to the earth He does not forget, using his oords, ”that in the human species, still more sensitive than curious,pleases generally, or for a long tireeable; that dry truth is killed by ennui!” Yet Bailly makes few proselytes; and a species of instinct deter a labour; and D'Aleoes so far as to tax them with poverty, even with hollow ideas, with vain and ridiculous efforts; he goes so far as to call Bailly, relatively to his letters, the _illuminated brother_ Voltaire is, on the contrary, very polite and very academical in his communications with our author The renown of the Brah closely the proofs, the arguenious astronomer We could also now enter into a serious discussion
The mysterious veil that in Bailly's tireat part raised We no the Astronomy of the Chinese and the Hindoos in all its detail We know up to what point the latter had carried their e The theory of central heat has in a few years y, prodigiously extended by the invaluable labours of Sacy, Remusat, Quatrehts on soned before a profound darkness Arht easily be established that the systems relative to an ancient unknown people, first creator of all the sciences, and relative to the Atlantidae, rest on foundations devoid of solidity Yet, if Bailly still lived, we should be only just in saying to hi the tense of a verb, ”Your two books _were_, Sir, treasures of the enious conjectures, adorned with an eloquence of style, which is always suitable to the subject”
FIRST INTERVIEW OF BAILLY WITH FRANKLIN--HIS ENTRANCE INTO THE FRENCH ACADEMY IN 1783--HIS RECEPTION--DISCOURSE--HIS RUPTURE WITH BUFFON
Bailly became the particular and intimate friend of Franklin at the end of 1777 The personal acquaintance of these two distinguished est manner