MEMOIR OF GEOFFEOY SAINT HILAIEE. 1G9 



Buffon had already remarked that there exists a constant conformity, 

 a sustained design, a hidden resemblance, more wonderful than the 

 apparent diversities: ''It would seem," he eloquently said, " that the 

 Supreme Being had chosen to employ but one idea, and at the same 

 time to vary it in all possible ways, to the end that man might equally 

 admire the magnificence of the execution and the simplicity of the 

 design," This unity of plan or idea was seen, after Buffon, by Vicq- 

 d'Azyr and by Camper: "Nature," says the former, "seems always 

 to work after a primitive and general pattern, from which she never 

 departs without regret, and hence the two characters which appear to 

 be impressed on all beings, that of constancy in the type and variety 

 in the modifications." Geoffroy, in turn, became impressed with 

 these views, but in a manner so original and profound as to entitle 

 him to be considered the author of a new science of philosophical 

 anatomy, unknown to all wlio had preceded him. 



The great and proper merit of Geoffroy is to have sought the 

 means of study and comparison in the primitive and constitutive ele- 

 ments of the organs. Before him, it was the adult state which had 

 been studied, where we find only the composite result: in the foetal 

 state, to which he directed his researches, the primitive nucleus, the 

 simple fact, stands revealed, destined in all cases to be the subject of 

 the same fixed and determinate laws of development, complication, 

 and relative position.* This unity of law is the last and highest proof 

 of the unity of design or idea, and thus the profoundest science passes 

 naturally into the most elevated philosophy. When Newton, at the 

 close of his immortal labors, recognized the fact that each globe or 

 world is subjected, not to its own proper or distinctive law, but all to 

 one sole and common law, he recorded the expressions so worthy the 

 admiration of every reflective mind: "It is certain that, as all bears 

 the impress of one sole design, all must be subject to one only and the 

 same Being." 



It was impossible that Geoffroy should have made the general idea 

 of the unity of composition in animals the subject of such exhaustive 

 meditation without having had his attention directed to those par- 

 ticular cases of anomalous or incomplete development which in ages 



'^ I. Law of development. For every orgaa there is a maximum and a minimum of devel- 

 opment; and no organ passes abruptly from one of these conditions to the other. A fortiori, 

 no organ disappears abruptly. The cetacea, %yhicb have no hinder members, have still a 

 small bone, the last veatige of these members, hidden under the sliin; the camivora, which 

 have no clavicle, have a small bone, its last vestige, suspended in the flesh, &c. 



II, Law of complication, or, more precisely, of compensation. When a part is developed 

 beyond proportion, it is usually seen that some other part is diminished or even effaced. 

 Among reptiles, the frog, which has members, has not ribs; serpents which have many ribs, 

 have no members, &c. 



III. Lata of relative position, or principle of connexions. All parts always preserve, in relation 

 to one another, the same place : the skull in relation to the vertebne, the vertebra in 

 relation to the members, aU parts of the members, each the same place in its relation to 

 other parts, &c. 



The principle of connexions is the chief, and, if I may say so, the operative principle of 

 M. Geoti'roy's theory: it is this which enables him to recognize, which unmasks to him 

 each part through all the mutations of form, of volume, of use, &c. These may, and. in 

 effect, do all change; but one thing, the position, is invariable. "An organ," says Geoflroy, 

 " is altered, atrophied, annihilated, sooner than transposed." 



