318 LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS. [xitl 



rable exposition of them, which Mr. Darwin has given, 



and see nothing there but a " derniere erreur du dernier 



siecle" — a personification of Nature — leads us indeed 



to cry with him : "0 lucidite ! solidite de l'esprit 



Francais, que devenez-vous V 



M. Flourcns has, in fact, utterly failed to comprehend 



the first principles of the doctrine which he assails so 



rudely. His objections to details are of the old sort, so 



battered and hackneyed on this side of the Channel, that 



not even a Quarterly Reviewer could be induced to 



pick them up for the purpose of pelting Mr. Darwin 



over again. We have Cuvier and the mummies : M. 



Roulin and the domesticated animals of America ; the 



difficulties presented by hybridism and by Palaeontology ; 



Darwinism a rifacciamento of De Maillet and Lamarck; 



Darwinism a system without a commen cement, and its 



author bound to believe in M. Pouchet, &c. Sec. How 



one knows it all by heart, and with what relief one reads 



at p. 65 — 



" Je laisse M. Darwin ! " 



But we cannot leave M. Flourens without calling our 

 readers' attention to his wonderful tenth chapter, " De 

 la Preexistence des Germes et de l'Epige'nese," which 

 opens thus : — 



" Spontaneous generation is only a chimscra. This point esta- 

 blished, two hypotheses remain : that of pre-existence and that of 

 epigenesis. The one of these hypotheses has as little foundation as 

 the other." (P. 1G3.) 



" The doctrine of ejngenesis is derived from Harvey : following by 

 ocular inspection the development of the new being in the Windsor 

 does, he saw each part appear successively, and taking the moment 

 of appearance for the moment of formation he imagined epigenesis." 

 (P. 1G5.) 



On the contrary, says M. Flourens (p. 1G7), 



" The new being is formed at a stroke {tout d\in coup), as a whole, 

 instantaneously ; it is not formed part by part, and at different times. 



