The marvels of superstition were displaced by the wonders of truth.

The two telescopes, the reflector and the achromatic, inventions of the last century, permitted man to penetrate into the infinite grandeurs of the universe, to recognize, as far as such a thing is possible, its illimitable spaces, its measureless times; and a little later the achromatic microscope placed before his eyes the world of the infinitely small.

The air-balloon carried him above the clouds, the diving-bell to the bottom of the sea.

The thermometer gave him true measures of the variations of heat; the barometer, of the pressure of the air.

The introduction of the balance imparted exactness to chemistry, it proved the indestructibility of matter.