MODERN BIOLOGY 333 



By that time, however, his days were numbered; he died of cholera during 

 the first epidemic that ravaged Europe, in i83z. His wife survived him, but 

 all his children had died before him. 



As a personality Cuvier has been very differently judged, both by his 

 contemporaries and by subsequent generations. It may be taken for granted 

 that one who served Napoleon with such great success was himself some- 

 thing of a despot, and he certainly did not escape the personal hatred that 

 is always the lot of such men. Bitter accusations have been made against 

 him even in modern times, but their truth is contradicted by the reputation 

 he enjoyed amongst his contemporaries. Better evidence of his true character 

 is provided by the unfailing dignity with which he carried on his contro- 

 versy against Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, as well as by his widely attested kind- 

 liness and helpfulness towards younger scientists. In his political views he 

 was conservative, though not one of the servile type; since the appearance 

 of the origin-of-species theory he has been accused even of scientific conserv- 

 atism on account of his having maintained the immutability of species; 

 in this respect he must naturally be judged according to the standards of 

 his time and, viewed from this standpoint, his opposition to Lamarck's 

 theories is easily explained. As to his vital importance for the development 

 of biology, however, there can be no two opinions; a survey of his most 

 important work will confirm this. 



Cuvier s co:nparative anatojny 

 When Cuvier set out to deal with comparative anatomy on scientific and 

 educational lines, he started from a point directly opposed to his predeces- 

 sors' line of advance. All of these had been medical men: Daubenton and 

 Vicq d'Azyr as well as Camper and Blumenbach; to them man was the pri- 

 mary object, with which all other living creatures were compared. Cuvier, 

 however, had begun by studying marine animals: fishes, molluscs, and 

 worms. Upon coming to Paris he carried out a num.ber of valuable investi- 

 gations, in the style of Camper, on special subjects, such as the orang-utan, 

 the rhinoceros, and the lemur, and later on, the Vertebrata became his chief 

 object of investigation. He believed his mission in life to be the creation of 

 a general comparative anatomy; he worked for it throughout his life and 

 in his other writings often referred to the forthcoming work, but it was 

 never completed. In preparation for it he published his lectures on compara- 

 tive anatomy, written down by his pupil Dumeril. The system of thought 

 that he elaborated in these lectures was adopted in several treatises on spe- 

 cial subjects: fishes, molluscs, and fossil vertebrates. Finally he published a 

 systematic work, Kegm animal^ based on the same principle. As a result of 

 these works he became, as W. Leche says, "the founder of modern compara- 

 tive zoology. He became so not through bringing to light a large number 

 of fresh facts, but rather through having introduced a new method." Much 



