Cuvier as a Naturalist 355 



the Emperor a picture of the progress of science from 1789. 

 This was to meet a vast idea of Napoleon's, who wished to ap- 

 preciate all that had tended to produce the great impulse given 

 to men's minds at this period ; and it may be affirmed that the 

 manner in which the task was executed equalled the elevated 

 views which gave rise to it. The connexion of the facts, exact- 

 ness in analyzing the works of others, and extreme perspicuity 

 displayed in this sketch, as well as the discrimination with which 

 he assigns to each his due, concur to place his work among the 

 first on the history of science ; and we may believe that he who 

 suggested it congratulated himself on its execution. 



The qualities just mentioned were conspicuous in his analysis 

 of the works of the Academy of Sciences, and in his numerous 

 reports or Memoirs presented to this Academy ; but especially 

 in his Eloges, where he succeeded, even better than Fontenelle, 

 in adapting science to the general taste of mankind, and in de- 

 lighting his reader with simple pictures of the life of men, 

 almost all of whom were obliged, like himself, to overcome in 

 their youth the difficulties which fortune had thrown in their 

 way, and by reflections marked by a wholesome philosophy, 

 which he was in the habit of drawing from the subject. 



All these merits, viz. a discriminating analysis, precision, and 

 perspicuity, wholesome and elevated conceptions, which had 

 their source in a profound knowledge of things, he shewed very 

 conspicuously in a work which unhappily exists only in the re- 

 collection of his hearers ; we allude to the history of the natu- 

 ral sciences which formed for some years the subject of his lec- 

 tures in the College of France, and of which we can here indi- 

 cate only the fundamental idea, that, as society could not be de- 

 veloped but by means of the discovery of the properties of natu- 

 ral bodies, each of these discoveries corresponds to a new degree 

 of civilization, and that the history of this civilization, and con- 

 sequently of every thing relating to the human race, is intimate- 

 ly connected with the history of the natural sciences. To take 

 a comprehensive view of his subject, required a deep knowledge 

 of history and philosophy ; he had to peruse every work on 

 these subjects that he might ascertain the origin of discoveries, 

 a task of immense labour, and requiring a great degree of pene- 

 tration, for many authors give only the germ of their ideas, and 

 leave the facts almost as obscure as they are in nature. 



