Cuvier as a Naturalist. 365 



and to man. A crowd of physiological impossibilities could in 

 this way be cited, for there are such, as well as mathematical 

 impossibilities ; and this consideration alone, viz. that the organs 

 do not all follow the same scale of increase or decrease, — that 

 there are some that augment, whilst others diminish, or alto- 

 gether disappear, appears to us to present an absolute impossi- 

 bility to this progress of the foetus through all the links of the 

 scale, — a theory which we believe to be founded only on a de- 

 ception of apparent form, either of the head or the extremities, 

 when these parts are in a state of incipient development. He 

 rejected it especially, from the conviction that it would be attend- 

 ed, like all other false systems, with very injurious consequences. 

 While he gratefully acknowledged that some discoveries are due 

 to theories, whose authors, in seeking what they hoped to prove, 

 encountered what they did not seek, he still regarded them as 

 injurious, inasmuch as they flattered that natural tendency of 

 the mind to make science repose on opinions already formed, 

 and dispense with laborious study. It was, therefore, from a 

 love to science, from a devotion to the discovery of truth, and 

 not from personal motives, or the vain desire of imposing his 

 opinions on others, that he opposed these doctrines ; and it was 

 even with the design of bringing back such minds as these to 

 what he regarded the true principles of science, that he had de- 

 termined, in the last years of his life, to resume his lectures in 

 the College of France. 



Considered in a progressive point of view, the theories seemed 

 to him far from answering to the idea which their authors form 

 of them. He regarded them only as modifications of the an- 

 cient pantheistic system, which has already made its appearance 

 in the world under many different forms. 



At the time of his death, he was labouring, not only at his 

 History of the Sciences, but at a great descriptive work on na- 

 tural history, the History of Fishes. His object was to shew, 

 by example joined to precept, in what manner we ought to seek 

 a knowledge of species — that definite end of natural history, and 

 how to group these species into genera, and associate genera 

 into families, and families into orders. 



The desire of knowing these animals, that he might be able 

 to draw up the work which was to crown his labours, a work 

 which was continually in his mind, and for which he had amass- 



VOL. XVI. NO. XXXII. APRIL 1834. B b 



