186 MEMOIR OF DUCROTAY DE BLAINVILLE. 



exacts in confradictiou a certain deference, and he did not recollect that the 

 Academy is a society. We did not cease to discern his merit through his man- 

 ner, but for this some little effort of equity was required, and that effort it is 

 always better to spare mankind the trouble of making." 



Not that these "efforts of equity" were wanting in the case of M. de Blain- 

 ville, any more than the terror with which, by his fierce attacks and stubborn 

 disputativeness, he had succeeded in inspiring the most hardy academicians. 

 He seemed at the last to have adopted an extreme resolution ; and, 



As if he had designed 



To break all terms of commerce with mankind, 



he withdrew from our reunions, and, in the spirit of Moliere's Alcestis, who 



yearned to find — 



Some nook of eartli, if earth such nook can give. 

 Where honest candor might have leave to live, 



he fairly barricaded himself, as has been shown, in the depths of his cabinet. 



He had undertaken to give, in a great work on comparative osteography,* 

 the description and demonstration of the collections confided to him, and super- 

 intended, with characteristic severity of attention, the drawings which none 

 could better judge of than himself. This enterprise involved enormous expense, 

 and had every claim to the encouragement which authority everywhere extends 

 to vast and important publications. It was but simple justice that the work 

 should be placed under the patronage of the government. But to obtain this, 

 it would have been necessary to make suit, or, at least, submit his claims, and 

 never was misanthrope more singularly bent on preserving all the prerogatives 

 of an intractable humor. Taking high ground, and with reason, in regard to 

 the value of the author and the work, he assumed that his wishes should have 

 been anticipated and his acceptance solicited ; for, over and above the hatred 

 which he had vowed to the human race, he endowed with a superior and priv- 

 ileged degree of irritation all that bore the guise of authority, and that by 

 which we were then governed chafing him in his prepossessions as a gentleman, 

 he could not be brought to condescend so far as to honor it with a request. 

 He suffered of course, complained bitterly, and had the satisfaction of accusing 

 all the world : colleges. Academy, ministry, government, all were culpable, all 

 except himself, who would abate no jot of his punctiliousness, and thereby only 

 succeeded in dispelling all possibility of fiuishing his learned and gigantic 

 catalogue. 



This man, whose captious spirit took fire at the very appearance of a favor 

 conferred by power, and whose antecedents by no means announced a concilia- 

 tor, employed himself, about this time, in a work of the most delicate concilia- 

 tion. Under the title of a History of the Sciences of Organization, adopted as a 

 Basis of Philosoj)Jiy,\ he published, in 1845, a work whose object, he said, was 

 the alliance of philosoph}^ and religion. 



Always led away by preconceived views, he carries into bistory the same 

 method as into philosophy. He constitutes types : Aristotle is the type of the 

 natural sciences in antiquity, Albert the Great in the middle ages, and, in our 



* The title of this work is : Osteography, or a Comparative Iconographic Description 

 of the Skeleton and Dental System of the Fire Classes of Vertebrate Animals, Recent and 

 Fossil, to Serve as a Basis for Zoology and Geology. 18ii9-T>0. It is from the ideas scat- 

 tered in different parts of this great work, incomplete as it unfortunately is, that I have 

 derived the palcontologiral doctrine of M. de Blainvilh^ ; for he had not the same good fortune 

 witli M. Cuvier, of collecting in a single discours the sum of his researches and views. 

 Death surprised him before he had finished his task; and to reproduce now the doctrine 

 which he labored with so much fearlessness and ardor, we have but scattered elements, often 

 left incompk'tein untinished pages. 



t In this work M. I'Abbe Mauiried co-operated with him, and it is scarcely necessary 

 to say that my remarks only apply to that part of the book pevtaiuiug to M. de Blaiuville. 



