Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/856

838 One day he had led me into the vestibule where there were two large cases running to the ceiling. They contained numberless boxes of notes, all labeled. Here were all the subjects M. Figuier treated. At a moment's notice he could have under his eye all that he had accumulated on any subject which interested him. While listening to his enthusiastic explanations I noticed on one shelf a number of neat manuscripts.

"What are these?" I asked.

"My theater," he said, with a tender regard. "There are the plays, mademoiselle, which are going to teach the world science as it was never taught before. There," he continued, warming, "is the greatest of all methods of scientific popularization. Nobody understands it; nobody supports it. The press will not recognize it. New ideas are choked to death in Paris by the jealousy of journalists. These plays have been represented before audiences which were wild with delight. Ah! but they are beautiful! But jealousy keeps them back."

"There is one on your countryman Franklin and electricity; here is another on how Morse got his appropriation bill through; here is one Bernhardt has read and promised me to play. She says it is superb, superb. It is on Catharine of Russia."

"And some of them have been given?"

"Nearly all, at my expense, understand. I believe it is one way to teach science to the people, and I mean to do all I can to push it. Here are two volumes of plays which I have put on at much cost. One season I hired a theater for a series of scientific matinees. Again I made a tour of the provinces with a troupe. I have given ten years of my life and spent my fortune for this idea. Once I lived in a hótel in the Champs Elysées, now I am here." And he looked scornfully around the modest room with its faded air. "I have given it all for my theater."

The pain of the man was too intense, his earnestness too profound, for me to probe deeper into this defeated passion of his old age, and I waited until a free hour in the Bibliothèque Nationale gave me leisure to discover just what M. Figuier's theater was. I found it was just what he said—an attempt to teach science by means of the drama. He argued in this way:

"Works of popular science contribute to dissipating the popular superstitions, concerning thunder, for example; but the book is silent and cold. A theatrical representation which shows the spectator the physical phenomena connected with thunder and lightning, under a striking and material form, will impress much more deeply.

"Besides teaching the laws of the physical and natural sciences, scenes from the lives of celebrated savants should be represented. Instead of taking, for the hero of a play, Cromwell,