When La Place had
described all that can, as yet, be known of the movements of the
heavenly bodies, he had dispersed, without even naming them, all the
astrological dreams of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Hindoos, much more
surely than he could have done by directly refuting them through
innumerable volumes. Truth is one; the book which exposes it is an
imposing and durable monument:
Il brave les tyrans avides,
Plus hardi que les Pyramides
Et plus durable que l'airain.
Error is manifold, and of ephemeral duration; the work which combats
it does not carry within itself a principle of greatness or of
endurance.
But if the power, and perhaps the opportunity, have failed us for
proceeding in the manner of La Place and of Say, we cannot refuse to
believe that the form which we have adopted has, also, its modest
utility. It appears to us especially well suited to the wants of the
age, to the hurried moments which it can consecrate to study.
A treatise has, doubtless, an incontestable superiority; but upon
condition that it be read, meditated upon, searched into.
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