388 MEMOIR OF M. ISIDORE GEOFFROY SAINT HILAIRE. 



is a real misfortune to science. During twenty -six years tliis man, of the first 

 order of mind, had in view, in all his works of detail, in all his lectlires, the 

 development of a class of ideas of the highest , importance. We have said 

 already, and repeat here, who shall take iip the work ? And even though 

 some one should step forward to replace him, can it be hoped that his successor 

 will lay hold of this immense problem with the materials and ability which 

 Isidore Geoifroy had at his command ? 



As if to increase- and justify our regrets, the author places at the head of the 

 first volume an analytic programme of what his book was to be. He divided 

 it into six portions, and we have seen that the second part, at most, will appear. 

 Two-thirds of the work will be forever known to us only by this epitome, the 

 whole of which, representing at least five or six volumes, hardly occupies three 

 pages. 



Unfinished, or rather only commenced as it is, the General Natural History 

 of tlie Organic Ulngdoms has rendered essential services. Isidore Geoffroy 

 had time to pronounce on some questions Avhich touch on the very foundations 

 of biological sciences, and it is of importance that his judgment on the greater 

 part of them should be kno\tn. Heir of Buffon, Lamarck, and of Etienne 

 Geoffroy, having constantly held aloft the banner of the philosophic school, no 

 one can less be suspected than he of having sacrificed to considerations foreign 

 to science. His opinions are the most formal condemnation of certain very 

 ancient doctrines, Avhich some have lately sought to revive in the name of science 

 and philosophy. 



Such, for example, is that which puts in doubt the reality of species, by 

 admitting that plants and animals may vary indefinitely, and bring forth 

 series of individuals so distinct as not to be confounded. No one can pronounce 

 against it more clearly than our author. He does more. He shows that in spite 

 of theoretical ideas, all serious naturalists have arrived at the same conclusion 

 on this question, as soon as they abandon the vague ground of hypothesis to 

 place themselves on that of facts. He has said, and he could say with reason, 

 that in spite of the profound difference of their general doctrines, Lamarck 

 and Cuviei'- agreed on this fundamental question. Both, in this, contradicted 

 some of their abstract principles ; each had to take some steps towards the 

 truth in an inverse direction. The one had to abandon the theory of indefinite 

 variability; the other, that of absolute fixity. Thus they met in the belief 

 which was that of the better years of Bufibn, that of Isidore Geofiroy : the belief 

 in the limited variability of species, the result of which is, that the forms and 

 certain functions may sometimes be modified within very extended limits, while 

 the essence of the being remains unaltered. 



In Buffon, no more than in GeofProy, was this belief- the result of mere 

 hypothetical views ; in both it was the result of a deep" study of facts. The 

 former, before reaching it, had passed through the extreme doctrines indicated 

 above ; the latter, enlightened by this example, and taught by what he had 

 under his eyes in the menagerie of the museum, saw the truth from the first, 

 and supported it by new proofs. 



Man could not escape the study of the savant who embraced the whole of 

 the animated creation. He was a prominent object of the researches and medi- 

 tations of Isidore Geoffroy. As early as 1842, in a short article of the Dic- 

 tionnaire Universel des Sciences Naturellcs, the author rejected the views gen- 

 erally adopted on the authority of Blumenbach and Cuvier, as to the subject of 

 the relation between man and the lower animals. He insisted that the order 

 of bimana should be struck out, as removing us too far from the monkeys, if we 

 see in man only the material being ; and bringing us too near them if we regard 

 the whole of human nature. At a later period, in his lectures,* and in his 



* Lessons on Anthropology, given at the Faculty of Science, and summed up hy M. De- 

 Yaille, ld5G. 



