And sets about preparing his Pamphlet to instruct mankind on the subject. Maupertuis, it appears, did write, and made others write to Konig's Sovereign Lady, the Dowager Princess of Orange, "How extremely handsome it would be, could her Most Serene Highness, a friend to Pure Science, be pleased to induce Monsieur Konig not to continue this painful Controversy, but to sit quiet with what he had got." [Voltaire (infra).] Which her Most Serene Highness by no mean thought the suitable course. Still less did Konig himself;whose APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC, with DEFENCE OF APPEAL,--reasonably well done, as usual, and followed and accompanied by the multitude of Commentators,--appeared in due course. ["September, 1752, Konig's APPEL" (Preuss, in OEuvres de Frederic, xv. 60 n.).] Till, before long, the Public was thoroughly instructed; and nobody, hardly the signing Curators, or thin Euler himself, not to speak of Perpetual Formey, who had never been strong in the matter, could well believe in "forgery" or care to speak farther on such a subject. Subject gone wholly to the Stygian Fens, long since; "forgery" not now imaginable by anybody!
The rumor of these things rose high and wide; and the quantity of publishing upon them, quasi-scientifically and otherwise, in the serious vein and the jocose, was greater than we should fancy.
["Letter from a Marquis;" "Letter from Mr. T--- to M. S---" (Mr. T.
lives in London;--"JE TRAVERSE LE Queen's Square, ET JE RENCONTRENOTRE AMI D---: 'AVEZ-VOUS LA l'Appel au Public?' DIT-IL"--);"Letter by Euler in the Berlin Gazette," &c. &c. (in
Maupertuisiana ).] Voltaire, for above a month past, had been fully aware of the case (24th July, 1752, writing to Niece, "heard yesterday"); not without commentary to oneself and others. Voltaire, with a kind of love to Konig, and a very real hatred to Maupertuis and to oppression generally, took pen himself, among the others (Konig's APPEAL just out),--could not help doing it, though he had better not! The following small Piece is perhaps the one, if there be one, still worth resuscitating from the Inane Kingdoms. Appeared in the BIBLIOTHEQUE RAISONNEE (mild-shining Quarterly Review of those days), JULY-SEPTEMBER Number.
"ANSWER FROM [VERY PRIVATELY VOLTAIRE, CALLING HIMSELF] ABERLIN ACADEMICIAN TO A PARIS ONE.
"BERLIN, 18th SEPTEMBER, 1752. This is the exact truth, in reply to your inquiry. M. Moreau de Maupertuis in a Pamphlet entitled ESSAIDE COSMOLOGIE, pretended that the only proof of the Existence of God is the circumstance that AR+nRB is a Minimum. [ONLY proof:
^??????^ (p.212 Book XVI)
VOILA!] He asserts that in all possible cases, 'Action is a Minimum,' what has been demonstrated false; and he says, 'He discovered this Law of Minimum,' what is not less false.
"M. Konig, as well as other Mathematicians, wrote against this strange assertion; and, among other things, M. Konig cited some sentences of a Letter by Leibnitz, in which that great man says, He has observed 'that, in the modifications of motion, the Action usually becomes either a Maximum or else a Minimum.'
"M. Moreau de Maupertuis imagined that, by producing this Fragment, it had been intended to snatch from him the glory of his pretended discovery,--though Leibnitz says precisely the contrary of what he advances. He forced some pensioned members of the Academy, who are dependent on him, to summon M. Koinig"-- As we know too well;and cannot bear to have repeated to us, even in the briefest and spiciest form! "Sentence (JUGEMENT) on M. Konig, which declares him guilty of having assaulted the glory of the Sieur Moreau Maupertuis by FORGING a Leibnitz Letter.--Wrote then, and made write, to her Serene Highness the Princess of Orange, who was indignant at so insolent"-- ... and in fine, "Thus the Sieur Moreau Maupertuis has been convicted, in the face of Scientific Europe, not only of plagiarism and blunder, but of having abused his place to suppress free discussion, and to persecute an honest man who had no crime but that of not being of his opinion. Several members of our Academy have protested against so crying a procedure; and would leave the Academy, were it not for fear of displeasing the King, who is protector of it."[ OEuvres de Voltaire, lxiii. 227 (in
Maupertuisiana, No. xvi).]
King Friedrich's position, in the middle of all this, was becoming uncomfortable. Of the controversy he understood, or cared to understand, nothing; had to believe steadily that his Academy must be right; that Konig was some loose bird, envious of an eagle Maupertuis, sitting aloft on his high Academic perch:
this Friedrich took for the truth of the matter;--and could not let himself imagine that his sublime Perpetual President, who was usually very prudent and Jove-like, had been led, by his truculent vanity (which Friedrich knew to be immense in the man, though kept well out of sight), into such playing of fantastic tricks before high Heaven and other on-lookers. This view of the matter had hitherto been Friedrich's; nor do I know that he ever inwardly departed from it;--as outwardly he, for certain, never did;standing, King-like, clear always for his Perpetual President, till this hurricane of Pamphlets blew by. Voltaire's little Piece, therefore, was the unwelcomest possible.
This new bolt of electric fire, launched upon the storm-tost President from Berlin itself, and even from the King's House itself,--by whom, too clearly recognizable,--what an irritating thing! Unseemly, in fact, on Voltaire's part; but could not be helped by a Voltaire charged with electricity. Friedrich evidently in considerable indignation, finding that public measures would but worsen the uproar, took pen in hand; wrote rapidly the indignant LETTER FROM AN ACADEMICIAN OF BERLIN TO AN ACADEMICIAN OF PARIS:
