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.La métaphysique et la dialectique sous les successeursd Alexandre, la politique et l éloquence sous la république Romaine, l histoire,la poësie dans le siècle d Auguste, la grammaire et la juri[s]prudence sous leBas-Empire, la philosophie scholastique dans le treizieme siècle, les Belles-Lettres jusqu aux jours de nos pères, ont fait, tour-a-tour, l admiration et lemépris des hommes.La physique et les mathématiques sont à présent sur letrône.Elles voyent toutes les sSurs prosternées devant elles, enchainées à leurchar, ou tout-au plus occupées à orner leur triomphe.Peut-être leur chute n estpas eloignée.Il seroit digne d un habile homme de suivre cette révolution dans lesreligions, les gouvernemens, les mSurs, qui ont successivement égaré, désolé etcorrompu les hommes.Qu il se gardât bien davantage de l éviter.²³[Every land and every age has seen some science the beneficiary of a preferencetoo often unjust, while other studies suffer from a contempt equally unjus-tifiable.Metaphysics and dialectic under the successors of Alexander, politicsand eloquence under the Roman republic, history and poetry in the Augustanage, grammar and jurisprudence under the later Empire, scholastic philosophyin the thirteenth century, humane letters until the age of our fathers, haveenjoyed by turns the admiration and the scorn of men.Physics and mathemat-²³ iv, pp.15 17.Gibbon would probably not know of Diderot s observation that d Alembert smathematics were already out of fashion, the public mind having turned to other subjects.By1758 d Alembert was refusing to take part in any but the mathematical sections of the Encyclopédie,but there is no indication that Gibbon had heard of this in Lausanne. 216 Paris and the defence of erudition, 1758 1763ics are now upon the throne.They see all their sisters prostrate before them,chained to their chariot wheels, or otherwise devoted to the adornment of theirtriumph.Perhaps their fall is not far distant.It would be worthy of a skilful writer to pursue this revolution in religion,government and manners, whose successive phases have misled, devastatedand corrupted humanity.Let him beware taking part in it himself.]Gibbon at Lausanne had studied mathematics, apparently at paren-tal prompting, and never altogether lost interest in them.But they werenot a passion with him, and in the Memoirs he congratulated himself onavoiding the temptation to apply geometrical proof to moral reason-ing.²t Here he is attributing to mathematics a present hegemony overhistory and the other sciences, and by doing so indicating that they arethemselves only part of the history they present the illusion of domina-ting.By depicting them in the role of an antique triumphator and con-queror, he is making them riders on the wheel of Fortune, and invitingthe habile homme, or philosopher, to study mathematics as history, andhistory itself as the record of that wheel, cette revolution dans lesreligions, les gouvernemens, les mSurs , which turns out to be nothingother than that histoire des empires from which l histoire des sciences wassupposed to be an escape.From his initial Mais, hélas! he has beenmoving to insist on the primacy of an ironic and elegiac perception ofhistory which includes philosophy itself.It is easy to present ourselves asinvolved in the same debate, and to suppose that it has no end; which isto share Gibbon s conservative and non-emancipatory perception, ex-pressed in his youth and not abandoned thereafter.The notion of système here makes a significant appearance.Thetriumph of Lockean philosophie over la scholastique was agreed to be avictory for méthode over système, but needed to be presented in a historicalscenario.It was a long stride from le Bas-Empire to le treizième siècle, andGibbon here fills in the interval in a way from which d Alembert had notdissented, but which he bases on another authority.L amour des systèmes, (dit M.Freret,) qui s empara des esprits après Aristote,fit abandonner aux Grecs l étude de la nature, et arrêta le progrès de leursdécouvertes philosophiques; les raisonnemens subtils prirent la place des ex-periences; les sciences exactes, la géométrie, l astronomie, la vraie philosophiedisparurent presqu entièrement.On ne s occupa plus du soin d acquérir desconnoissances nouvelles, mais de celui de ranger, et de lier les unes aux autres,celles que l on croyoit avoir, pour en former des systèmes.C est là ce qui forma toutes les différentes sectes: les meilleurs esprits²t Memoirs, pp.77 8 (A, pp.141 2); above, p.83
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