MEMOIR OF GEOFFEOY SAINT HILAIRE. 173 



details. Facts were no more than facts, and the harvest of grand 

 ideas appeared to have been gathered. It was at this point that a 

 new genius arose, bold, original, and penetrating. The whole sci- 

 ence becomes at once reanimated ; the fact is vivified by the idea ; 

 conjecture unites itself with the most exact observation. The new 

 adventurer overleaps the recognized boundaries, and, beyond those 

 boundaries, establishes a new science, to which he communicates 

 something essentially and pointedly his own : his daring, his love of 

 abstract and hazardous combinations, his sudden and unforeseen intui- 

 tions. The renown of Geoffroy will consist in his having laid the 

 foundation of the profound science of the intimate nature of beings, 

 philosophic anatomy. 



To his principal ideas on the laws of animal organization, Geoffroy, 

 towards the latter years of his life, added some others which are but 

 accessory in relation to the former. These were his views on the 

 muf ability of species, on the Jiliatio7i of existing species with lost ones, 

 and that other Jiliation of £eras and species which would make of all 

 beings only successive stages of one and the same being. These 

 views, in which, it must be confessed, the real does not sufficiently 

 disengage itself from the ideal, are not peculiar to Geoffroy. They 

 form no part of that noble assemblage of new and fundamental laws 

 which constitute his proper doctrine and to which his name will 

 always be attached. 



From the first institution of the faculty of sciences, Geoffroy had 

 been called to one of its chairs of anatomy and general zoology. Here 

 it was that he indulged himself in the development of his philosophic 

 ideas. In the chair which he filled at the museum for nearly half a 

 century, his principal object was the study of the relations of beings, 

 a study which he carried so far that it is to be regretted he has left 

 nothing written upon it. 



What gave most force to the lessons of Geoffroy was his enthusi- 

 astic admiration for the sciences. He would not admit that bounds 

 could be prescribed to their progress, but expected and required of 

 them the ever- renewed emotions which constituted the excitement 

 and charm of his life. In familiar intercourse the inspirations of a 

 rich and rapid imagination imparted to his conversation not only 

 fertility of ideas but a certain elasticity of thought, whose manifes- 

 tations Avere often as striking as unexpected. He was too much 

 indebted, indeed, to his imagination not to give it the rein ; at times 

 perhaps too freely ; for to this source might be imputed the few 

 moments of estrangement which shadowed the course of his friend- 

 ships. Yet, even at such moments, it was but necessary to address 

 one's self to his heart to find all those traits of youth restored which 

 governed, as we have seen, his earlier intercourse with Cuvier. 

 "The excellent young man," as Cuvier then characterized him, 

 survived to the last ; always under the dominion of some generous 

 impulse, always ready to spend himself, and, what is still more rare, 

 to efface himself, in the service of another ; always confiding and 

 open with his friends, as in the first stages of life. Nor were the 

 acts of generosity and devotion with which his life was filled always 

 unattended with personal danger. We have seen him risking his 



