attention to the phenomena that had struck us and that Lambert had so
marvelously analyzed, I understood the value of his work, then already
forgotten as childish. I at once spent several months in recalling the
principal theories discovered by my poor schoolmate. Having collected
my reminiscences, I can boldly state that, by 1812, he had proved,
divined, and set forth in his Treatise several important facts of
which, as he had declared, evidence was certain to come sooner or
later. His philosophical speculations ought undoubtedly to gain him
recognition as one of the great thinkers who have appeared at wide
intervals among men, to reveal to them the bare skeleton of some
science to come, of which the roots spread slowly, but which, in due
time, bring forth fair fruit in the intellectual sphere. Thus a humble
artisan, Bernard Palissy, searching the soil to find minerals for
glazing pottery, proclaimed, in the sixteenth century, with the
infallible intuition of genius, geological facts which it is now the
glory of Cuvier and Buffon to have demonstrated.

I can, I believe, give some idea of Lambert's Treatise by stating the
chief propositions on which it was based; but, in spite of myself, I
shall strip them of the ideas in which they were clothed, and which
were indeed their indispensable accompaniment. I started on a
different path, and only made use of those of his researches which
answered the purpose of my scheme. I know not, therefore, whether as
his disciple I can faithfully expound his views, having assimilated
them in the first instance so as to color them with my own.

New ideas require new words, or a new and expanded use of old words,
extended and defined in their meaning. Thus Lambert, to set forth the
basis of his system, had adopted certain common words that answered to
his notions. The word Will he used to connote the medium in which the