860 Cuvier as a Naturalist. 



are obliged, even after many abstractions, to allow that many 

 of them present anomahes in one or many of their parts. 

 From this statement of the question, we cannot see how it 

 could be inferred from M. Cuvier''s opposition to this system, 

 that he was an enemy lo the progress of science, and wished to 

 repress the genius of those who sought to advance its interests. 

 He was too much impressed with the maxim of Linnaeus, that 

 no human efforts can shake the truth, to attempt to oppose the 

 propagation of a discovery. 



The different doctrines which naturalists entertain, have, with- 

 in these few years, been characterised by denominations taken 

 from the prevailing political theories. It has been said, that in 

 science there exists a movement and a conservative party ; and 

 Cuvier has been placed as a leader of the followers of the latter, 

 because he would not admit as true some of the would-be phi- 

 losophical systems of the day. We regard this as an extraor- 

 dinary mistake. No one more than he was an advocate for the 

 progress of the sciences, because to them he attributed the de- 

 velopment of civihzation, and from them, since their more rapid 

 progress, he has dated a nc^w era of our race, as may be easily 

 learnt from the perusal of his remarks on science, embodied in 

 his Eloges. No one more anxiously desired to see the natural 

 sciences supported upon general principles similar to those on 

 which the physical sciences are built. He who, in 1808, said 

 to Napoleon, that " general truths constituted the nohle in- 

 heritance of our race f — he who, in the introduction of his 

 work on fossil bones, remarked, " Why may not natural history 

 one day have its Newton .^" could not be the enemy of theory. 

 But no one also was more capable than he to bring a matured 

 judgment to bear upon those that have appeared, since no one 

 like him had always present to his mind all the knowledge con- 

 cerning organization that has been collected. " I have searched 

 for them, I have myself found them," said he, speaking of uni- 

 versal theories, shortly before his death, " but I have not pub- 

 lished them, because I have recognised that they were false, as 

 I believe all have been that have yet been proposed. I say 

 more, I say that in the actual state of science, it is impossible to 

 discover one, and therefore it is that I observe, and that I com- 

 mend observation, because it alone can lead to the discovery of 



