MEMOIR OF CUYIERi 



By M. Flourens. 



Translated for the Smithsonian Institution ly C. A. Alexander.* 



"VVlicn a nation loses ono of those men wliose sole name would suffice for its 

 OAvn glory and that of an epoch, the grief which it feels is so profound that 

 voices are raised on all sides to deplore the common calamity. There is a general 

 emulation to pour forth the puldic regret at their tomb ; a universal impulse to 

 make known all that can be learned respecting lives so illustrious and so honorable 

 to humanity. 



So it should have been, and so in effect it has been in regard to M. Cuvier. Men 

 of science, men of letters, whole Academies, indeed, have already published 

 accounts of his life and j^erson, and it would be too late to-day for the Academy 

 of Sciences to say anyihing new of the great man whom it has lost. But, among 

 the labors on which rests his renown, there are such as pertain more specially 

 to this Academy, and the study of which is far from being exhausted. I allude to 

 the progress wdiicli the natural sciences owe to M. Cuvier, a progress which has 

 renovated all those sciences, and which has so greatly extended them that it has 

 in reality extended, through them, the reach of the human mind and the domain 

 of genius. 



In ]\I. Cuvier, therefore, I consider here only the savant, and even in the savant 

 shall, above all, consider the naturalist. Fontenelle said, in his account of 

 Leibnitz, that he had been obliged, in some sort, to divide and decompose that 

 great man ; and that quite the contrary of antiquity, which had made one Hercules 

 out of many, he had made of Lcil;)iiitz alone, many savants. So it is necessary 

 to decompose M. Cuvier, if we would at all measure his genius; this great intel- 

 lect wliioli, like that of Leibnitz, " conducted all the sciences abreast," and which, 

 not restricting itself to the sciences, diffused its light on the highest institutions 

 of the state, requires, in order to be properly comprehended, as many separate 

 discussions as it has manifested different capacities. I repeat, therefore, that I 

 here consider in M. Cuvier only the naturalist; but even so, my task will be 

 immense, and, in venturing to approach it, 1 need all the indulgence of those 

 to whom I address myself. 



The history of JM. Cuvier, if we recall all that the natural sciences owe to 

 liim, is scarcely less in fact than the history of those sciences in the earlier part 

 f)f the nineteenth century. The eighteenth had already communicated to them 

 a rajjid movement in advance. Two individuals, Linnaeus and Ihiffon, had espe- 

 cially co-operated in ])roducing this movement; and although endowed other- 

 wise with very different qualities, it is to be remarked, nevertheless, that it was 

 from tilt; same cause that both had failed in their aim. Those phenomena, in 

 cffcft, those beings, those facts, which the comprehensive genius of LinntBus 

 Sdught to distinguish and to classify; those facts which the soaring genius of 

 I'uHon sought to combine and to explain, were not yet sufficiently known in 

 their intimate nature to snp[)ly either thuir true classiiicalion or their real explana- 

 tion. 



The primary merit of jM. Cuvier, and it was by this merit that he comnmni- 

 cated from the first a new life to the natural sciciices, was the distinct perception 



*Kead before the Academy of Seicuces, 'i'Jth December, 1834. 



