168 MEMOIR OF GEOFFKOY SAINT HILAIRE. 



plex structure, are still separate, and the problem is resolved : tlie 

 number of bones is found to be everywhere the same. 



These ingenious investigations, which laid the foundation of en- 

 tirely new views in science, date from the year 1807. It was in 

 that year that Geoffroy, a place having become vacant in the academy, 

 offered himself as a candidate. On this occasion having submitted 

 some of his memoirs to the celebrated geometer Lagrange, he was 

 asked by the latter what he thought of his competitor? " We know 

 that he is an accomplished entomologist; but is he a Reaumur or 

 Fabricius?" " A Fabricius," replied Geoflroy. " Yet for my part, 

 young man," rejoined Lagrange, "I prefer a few such pages as you 

 have recently read before the academy to whole volumes after the 

 manner of Fabricius." Cuvier, in congratulating him on his nomi- 

 nation, which took place 14th September of the above year, remarked 

 to him, " I am the more gratified because I had reproached myself 

 with occupying a place which rightfully belonged to you." This 

 Geoffroy often pleased himself with recalling, ingenuously adding, 

 that the expressions of Cuvier surprised him, as the idea had never 

 occurred to him that his own nomination could possibly precede that 

 of his distinguished friend. 



In 1810 Geoffroy proceeded to Portugal to execute a commission 

 of the emperor, who, wishing that all the remarkable objects in for- 

 eign museums should be represented in those of France, sent him to 

 visit that of Lisbon, which abounded especially in rare and valuable 

 specimens from Brazil. Before setting out, he provided himself wdth 

 all that could be spared from our own galleries, and though invested 

 with full powers as a commissioner, in a country occupied by our 

 troops, he took nothing except on the terms of an exchange. This 

 generous proceeding smoothed all difficulties, and he had the satisfac- 

 tion, not only of returning with ample collections, but of having 

 gained for his own country a new title to the respect of foreign 

 nations. 



In his whole scientific career, a career at once so laborious and 

 enthusiastic, Geoffroy may be said to have realized the idea of a cele- 

 brated writer, "that he who sees one truth thoroughly, sees always 

 an infinity of others, and that he who should see all truths would at 

 last see but one." To date from the memoir which opened to him 

 the doors of the academy, his whole thoughts, meditations, and re- 

 searches were bent on one object: the study of the unity of composition 

 in animals. This led him to style himself in the words of Saint Au- 

 gustine: Itomo unius lihri, the man of a single book. It w^as in 1818, 

 that he ventured finally to assign this unity of composition as the first 

 and supreme law of the whole animal kingdom, and that he gave to 

 the world the work since become so well known under the title of the 

 theory of analogues or anatomical philosophy.* 



* The exact title of this work is: Philosophie Anatomique: — Des organes respiratoires sous le 

 rapport de la determination et de V identity de leur pi'ces osseuses. It consists of four memoirts, pre- 

 ceded by a preliminary discourse on the author's theory. "The views," he says, "to 

 which we are conducted by the presentiment that we shall ajjways find in each family the 

 organic parts which we have observed in another, are what I have embraced iu this work 

 uader the denomination of the Theory of Analogues." 



