HISTORY OF THE WORKS OF CUVIER. 153 



known, or begin to be exliausted, that recourse is bad to systems; and what is 

 unfortunate for the history of science is not the mania of s^'stems, which prevails 

 before the acquisition of facts, but that which seeks to reproduce itself afterwards. 



The great work of M. Cuvier on fossil bones shows that there is not a single 

 bone, a single part of a bone, of which the study is not valuable, necessary, often 

 indispensable, lor the distinction of fossil species from existing species. This 

 work seems everywhere a living proof of the saying of a celebrated writer, that 

 never, except in the ])rofound study of details, have the secrets of nature been 

 surprised ; and it cannot be observed without pain that while there remain to 

 be discovered any of those facts of which the least circumstances possess such 

 an importance, so many authors turn away from this curious and solid research 

 for so many other researches as vain as they are idle ; these, for example, choosing 

 to discover, in any event, all the parts in each ; the entire body in the head, the 

 members in the jaws, the thorax in the nose, &c., those, making by turns the 

 pieces of an apparatus pass into another, in order thus to arrive at a unity of 

 number which this overturning of everything does not itself yield them. The 

 object of M. Cuvier, it may easily be conceived, was not to follow the authors in 

 question into these researches, more hardy than philosophic ; he nowhere pretends 

 to find in an apparatus either representations of parts foreign to that apparatus, 

 or constant numbers of pieces or bones, but he seeks how far the correspondence 

 of these pieces goes and where it stops. 



At no epoch has it been possible to compare the different beings which compose 

 the animal kingdom without remarking, at the same time, their resemblances and 

 their differences, and the difficulty has never been other than to fix the precise 

 limit between the analogies which constitute, on the one hand, the characters 

 more or less general of species, and the differences which, on the other, constitute 

 their characters more or less distinctive and peculiar. Hence arise two branches 

 of the same study, which> both date from the first ages of science ; one the search 

 for analogies, the other the search for differences. Now, it is readily conceivable 

 that, according to the epoch, such or such of these researches should appear mort 

 or less important in relation to the other ; but, at bottom, it is easy to see that 

 one always supposes the other, and that it is neither the evident analogies nor 

 evident dissimilitudes which could ever have been the subject of serious discus- 

 sion, but, in truth, the real differences hidden under apparent analogies, or 

 inversely, the analogies hidden under'differences. In a word, as it is impossible 

 to mark the point where dissimilarity commences without marking that where 

 analogy ceases, it would be impossible to carry the study of diilerences as far 

 as M. Cuvier has done without recognizing the })oint where the analogies com- 

 mence ; and perhaps it was necessary, in eflect, to exhaust first the study of diiler- 

 ences in order to be sure of allowing no analogies afterwards to stand but suet 

 as are real and incontestable. 



However this may be, the profound sentiment that an immense analogy, oc 

 rather that analogies of all kinds bind together more or less all the beings of tlw 

 animal kingdom, is a sentiment which, as 1 have just said, dates from the first 

 ages of science. The whole work of Aristotle bears on the conformity of the 

 different species with one another, and of all with man, taken as a conunon term 

 of com])arison. Buffon wonders at the constant unifornfity of design, aiul asks 

 if this latent resemblance be not more surprising than the apparent ditlcrences 

 {Histoire de Vamc). Haubenton points out the conformity of structure in the 

 greater part of the skeleton, and particularly in the foot — that is to say, the part 

 of the skeleton which varies the most {Descriptlondii chcvai). Camper, in two 

 ingenious discourses,* dilates on the astonishing analogy between the structure 



* Discnurs sur Vanalngie qu'il y a entrc la structure du corps humriin rt cclle des quadru- 

 pbdcs, Sec. — Belon, bcfuro Camper, by placing vciticiilly the skolettui of a MrI, had reiulcrcd 

 conspicuous a multitude of relfitions tilltheu uunoticed, with the human skeleton. Hisiuire 

 de la nature es oiseaux, &{c. 



