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Updated: May 1, 2025
Lauzun was conducted there as before, and never pardoned Maupertuis the severe pedantry of his exactitude. This last journey was made in the autumn of 1680. Lauzun consented to everything. Madame de Montespan returned triumphant.
Even earlier the idea had come more or less vaguely to another great dreamer and worker of Germany, Immanuel Kant, and to several great Frenchmen, including De Maillet, Maupertuis, Robinet, and the famous naturalist Buffon a man who had the imagination of a poet, though his message was couched in most artistic prose.
There was only one consideration to give him pause, and that was a grave one: to attack Maupertuis upon this matter was, in effect, to attack the King.
Maupertuis, La Mettrie, and the Marquis of Argens had preceded Voltaire to Berlin. He was received there with enthusiasm and as sovereign of the little court of philosophers.
Voltaire from of old had faithfully done his kowtows to this King of the Sciences; and, with a sort of terror, had suffered with incredible patience a great deal from him. But there comes an end to all things; Voltaire's patience not excepted. It lay in the fates that Maupertuis should steadily accumulate, day after day, and now more than ever heretofore, upon the sensitive Voltaire.
"Voltaire had dinner-party, Maupertuis one of them; party still in the drawing-room, dinner just coming up. Friedrich's Answers to these Voltaire Letters, if he wrote any, are all gone. Probably he answered almost nothing; what we have of his relates always to specific business, receipt of LOUIS QUATORZE, and the like; and is always in friendly tone. Handsomely keeping Silence for Two!
Immediately upon his accession, he wrote to Rollin and Voltaire, that he desired the continuance of their friendship; and sent for Mr. Maupertuis, the principal of the French academicians, who passed a winter in Lapland, to verify, by the mensuration of a degree near the pole, the Newtonian doctrine of the form of the earth.
On the eve of going, in utter disregard of his promise to the king, he fired a parting shot at Maupertuis, in the shape of a supplement to the attack he had already made, then travelled leisurely on his way. Frederick waited until he reached Frankfort; there he was detained by order of the king on the charge of having some verses written by Frederick in his possession.
Maupertuis faisoit instruire un perroquet par son laquais, et vouloit qu'on lui apprit des mots extraordinaires. Depuis deux ans le laquais, enseignoit a l'animal a dire monomotapa, et le perroquet n'en disoit que des syllabes separees. Maupertuis faisoit des reproches au laquais; "Oh, monsieur," dit celui-ci, "cela ne va pas si vite; je lui ai d'abord appris mo et puis no."
It would be absurd to conclude that the Welch or Highlanders are a gigantic people, because those mountains may have produced a few individuals near seven feet high. It would be equally absurd to suppose the French are a nation of philosophers, because France has given birth to a Des Cartes, a Maupertuis, a Reaumur, and a Buffon.
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