180 MEMOIR OF DUCROTAY DE BLAINVILLE. 



the animal life appear, and the more perfect will be the animal." M. de Blain 

 ville combines the two ideas of Buflfon. In effect, there are, in life itself, two 

 lives, the life of nutrition and that of sensation. Of the general envelope, Buffon 

 saw but the exterior part, the seat of the sensations ; M. de Blainville sees this 

 envelope continued, turned inward, penetrating into the interior, and becoming 

 there the seat of the respiratory and digestive functions. And, as there are two 

 lives, so are there two grand systems of apparatus, the vascular and the nervous 

 apparatus ; and on these two depend all the organs : on the first the organs of 

 sense and of motion; on the second the organs of secretion and nutrition.^ 



The abstract type of the living being once established, a new frame-work is 

 furnished to M. de Blainville wherein all the details of comparative anatomy — 

 details almost infinite in number — become classified and concentrated. The 

 different structures appear only as realized instances of one first conception. 

 The dogmatic process is substituted for the experimental, and M. de Blain\'ille, 

 having impressed the science with the form of his own genius and originality, 

 might also consider himself a master, and a great master.* 



So many and such strenuous labors had long since marked out for M. de 

 Blainville a place in the Academy ; he was called to it in 1825.t In 1830, a 

 royal ordinance having divided into two that part of the instruction of the Mu- 

 seum devoted to the demonstration of invertebrate animals, he was naturally 

 designated, from his admirable labors on the mollusks and zoophytes, for the 

 occupancy of one of the chairs. Thus, though late in his application to the 

 sciences, he had acquired the best position which they can confer, and saw the 

 destiny accomplished which he had traced for himself when, in a moment of 

 spleen, he had said to Cuvier : " I shall take my seat one day at the Institute 

 and the Museum, beside you, in face of you, and in spite of you." The last 

 phrase was an injustice, for it assumed an animosity which did not exist ; but 

 it would have been to diminish the enjoyment to have ceased to believe in it : 

 experience bad simply proved to Cuvier the difficulty of their relations, and had 

 made him distrustful of them. 



M. de Blainville had now arrived at that age when a man of superior intellect 

 feels the necessity of connecting his collective ideas by some philosophic bond. 

 His long studies on zoology had led him to see in the animal kingdom only a 

 continuous series of beings, which, becoming at each stage more animated, more 

 sensitive, more intelligent,! ascend from the most inferior animals up to man ; 

 an elevated view, which was that of Aristotle in antiquity, as it was that of 

 Leibnitz in modern times. " The continuity of gradations," says Aristotle, 

 " conceals the limits which separate beings, and withdraws from the eye the 

 point which divides them." " I love maxims which are self-supporting," said 

 Leibnitz ; and we know that, to have such maxims, he had conceived the idea 

 of reducing them all to one. His philosophy has but one principle, that oi con- 

 tinuity. Each being, in the globe that we inhabit, is connected with all others, 

 and that globe itself with all globes. " With M. Leibnitz," said Fontenelle, "one 

 would have seen either the end of things, or that they have no end." , 



Never has a scientific idea experienced more vicissitudes than that of the scale 

 of beings. All the naturalists of the eighteenth century admit it. " The progres- 

 sion of nature is effected by insensible shadings," says Buffon. " Nature makes 



* It is to be regretted that this production, conceived with so much vigor, should have 

 remained incomplete. It would be difficult to find a mind suited for the continuation of the 

 work, and capable of reducing the whole of comparative anatomy to the dogmatic form. 



+ He had been presented as early as 1814, and even at that early period with just title, 

 to replace M. Olivier. 



X This idea of series was with him always predominant. See especially his remark- 

 able Prodrome (V line Nouvdle Distrihution Systematique du Eigne Aniinol, 181G; his article 

 on the word Animal, in the Suppl6mcnt du Dictionairc des Sciences Natiirellcs, published in 

 1840. and his great work Osteographie Comparee. 



