I must also make a decisive confession on this matter, and acknowledge that literature, which formerly held the first degree in the scale of the moral riches of this nation, is likely to decline in priority and influence. The sciences have claimed and obtained in the public mind a superiority resulting from the very nature of their object; I mean utility. The title of _savant_ is not more brilliant than formerly; but it is more imposing; it leads to consequence, to superior employments, and, above all, to riches. The sciences have done so much for this people during their revolution, that, whether through instinct, or premeditated gratitude, they have declared their partiality towards the _savans_, or men of science, to the detriment of the mere literati. The sciences are nearly allied both to pride and national interest; while literature concerns only the vanity and interest of a few individuals. This difference must have been felt, and of itself alone have fixed the esteem of the public, and graduated their suffrages according to the merit of the objects. Regard being had to their specific importance, I foresee that this natural classification will be attended with happy consequences, both for sciences and literature. I have been enabled to observe that very few men of science are unacquainted with the literature of their country, whether for seeking in it pleasing relaxation, or for borrowing from it a magic style, a fluent elocution, a harmony, a pomp of expression, with which the most abstract meditations can no longer dispense to be received favourably by philosophers and men of taste. Very few literati, on the other hand, are unacquainted with philosophy and the sciences, and, above all, with natural knowledge; whether not to be too much in arrear with the age in which they live, and which evidently inclines to the study of Nature, or to give more colour and consistence to their thoughts, by multiplying their degrees of comparison with the eternal type of all that is great and fertile. It has been so often repeated that HOMER, OSSIAN, and MILTON, knew every thing known in their times; that they were at once the greatest natural philosophers and the best moralists of their age, that this truth has made an impression on most of the adepts in literature; and as the impulse is given, and the education of the present day by the retrenchment of several unnecessary pursuits, has left, in the mind of the rising generation, vacancies fit to be filled by a great variety of useful acquirements, it appears to me demonstrated, on following analogy, and the gradations of human improvement, that the sciences, philosophy, and literature will some day have in France but one common domain, as they there have at present, with the arts, only one central point of junction.