MEMOIR OF DUCEOTAY DE BLAINVILLE. 187 



own days, M. de Lamarck. He nearly suppresses all the rest of naturalists, and, 

 in his impassioned delineations, fails to remember that history is a judge, and 

 that the first duty of a judge is impartiality. Nor is he less rash as a diplo- 

 matist than historian : seeking the first principles of his philosophy in Lamarck, 

 Gall, and Broussais, whom he calls the three great philosophers of our age, and 

 thus encumbered with no light baggage of materialism, he ventures into uncer- 

 tain paths, and misses the only svn-e one, which Bossuct had followed in his 

 immortal treatise of the Knowledge of God and of ourselves. But it was labor 

 and time lost. The science of organization cannot be the basis of philosophy. 

 The domains are separated. What we now call philosophy, what Descartes 

 called, by a more precise term, metaphysics, has but one object, profoundly cir- 

 cumscribed — the study of the soul. 



As an analytical appreciation of the progress of the human mind in the 

 natural sciences, the book of M. de Blainville had been preceded by one of M. 

 Cuvier on the same subject,* a production slowly matured and of a calmer spirit. 

 In comparing the latter work with the other, one is involuntarily reminded of 

 the well-known line : 



My phlegm's <as philosophic as your spleen. 



A wide interval separates the penetrating sagacity which detects the weak side 

 in the ideas of others from the deliberate reflection which sits in judgment on its 

 own. Too impatient to subject his theories to a severe analysis, but too pru- 

 dent to leave them exposed to attacks which might incur danger, M. de Blain- 

 ville made use of stratagem : he carried the war among his adversaries, and, 

 allowing them neither peace nor truce, compelled them to hold themselves always 

 on the defensive. 



The necessity of success, an implacable tyrant, in him inspired by turns the 

 stubborn disputant and the fascinating professor ; and it was because in the 

 latter character success was certain that in entering upon the functions of the 

 master, not only did he put forth all his intellectual superiority, but he dis- 

 played likewise his better moral qualities : the confidence of being useful, the 

 hope of being loved, the charm of appreciation, removed then all the asperities 

 of the surface The sentiment of recognized pre-eminence sufficed to dispel all 

 roughness and pretension ; and confident of his strength, nor yet affecting any 

 concealment of his efforts, he gained much by being seen in this light. One 

 day, at the exit from a lecture, a former scholar drew near in order to congratu- 

 late him on the happy manner in which he had just ti'eated an important ques- 

 tion. " I am glad that you are satisfied," rejoined M. de Blainville ; " the 

 Bubject was difficult, and for eight days I have meditated upon this lecture from 

 nine o'clock in the morning until midnight." This avowal discovers a strict 

 conscientiousness, for no one ever possessed more than he the gift of brilliant 

 improvisation. He has been known, after an hour and a half occupied in rich 

 and animated lecturing, on being excited by some objection, to begin anew to 

 discourse and argue, with closed doors, regaining at once all his strength and re- 

 sources, conceding nothing, and remaining always the last champion in the field. 



An ardor like this for disputation subjected to singular vicissitudes friendships 

 which certainly ran no risk of growing languid through dull acquiescence. The 

 faithful associate, t the sage Pylades of this impetuous Orestes, once said to me: 

 " For nearly half a century that our intimacy has lasted, it has been rather 

 cherished and cemented by discussion than by perfect agreement." Li effect, 

 if M. de Blainville obtained, sooner than suited him, a triumph for the thesis 



* I speak of the reproduction of the lectures of M. Cuvier at the College of France, 

 published under tho title of Histoire des Sciences Naturelle Depuis leur Origine Jusqui'd nog 

 jours. 



t Our learned colleague, M. Constant Prevost, who pronounced at the tomb of his 

 fiiend a discourse full of the sensibility which is inspired by profound atfectiou. 



