Congressional Serial Set Volume 3833

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1899 Excerpt: ... THE LIFE ANT) WORKS OF Brown-seqtjard. By M. Berthelot. Geber, tlie Arabian philosopher and chemist, asserts that the perfection of a being depends upon an exact equilibrium among its elements. Whenever that state of equilibrium is obtained, he says, the being becomes immortal, because there is then a complete compensation between its opposing elements and nature. Whatever may be thought of such reasoning, ideas and definitions of this kind correspond but little with the conditions that affect geuius in art and science. In fact power and beauty generally are the result of the exaltation of certain qualities developed with an unusual intensity; this constitutes the true originality of genius, and all compensation between contrary aptitudes results in a certain mediocrity. These truths have rarely found a more striking application than in the career of Brown-Scquard. Ho possessed qualities of imagination and of originality characteristic of great discoverers, rather than those habits of precision, accuracy, and application that belong to scientists of repute in their work, scientists that are perhaps more esteemed in the academies because they have fewer imperfections. Still, let us not forget that it is the inventive minds that keep humanity going. Brown-Sequard was an inventor, and some of his fundamental ideas, thought to be strange and almost senseless at the time they were expressed, in the crude state in which he frequently left them, have yet shown an originality as marked, perhaps, as thoseof Pasteur or of Claude Bernard. Brown-Sequard left a profound mark on the biological field because he had a very high ideal of science, an ideal that he pursued iu spite of all obstacles with a passionate devotion, sacrificing to it the idols ordinarily worshiped b...