E P I S T L E

T O M Y W I F E .

A dedicatory epistle has almost always been a monument that poverty and lowliness raised to wealth and greatness. This self-interested praise, which an Author servilely lavished upon the Children of fortune, made the Muses the goddesses of inspiration in the arts blush; it never honored the one who received it, and it always dishonored the one who gave it. For my part, when I was writing this Work, back when Great Men still existed, I did not stain the first pages of my Book with such a blemish; it was under the auspices of hymen marriage that it was to appear, and the most beautiful of the Muses, Erato the Muse of love poetry, engraved the name of Love upon its frontispiece. And indeed, who should, by a more just title, receive the tribute of my labor (1), than she who saw the first seed of my system bloom, who helped its development, followed its progress; who consented to go abroad to publish it, and who knew how to soften the fatigue and boredom of sixteen years of painful

(1) The Author's wife has a sacred title to the dedication of this Work. It is she who saved the greatest part of it from the flames, where the Author was about to cast it, driven by a violent feeling of hatred against the Gens de Lettres Men of Letters who persecute those who work to enlighten their Century.