INTRODUCTION. XXVll 



This is the answer which I would give to the ques- 

 tion recently propounded by Mons. L. Agassiz. /' Were 

 the physical changes to which our globe has been sub- 

 jected effected for the sake of the animal world, con- 

 sidered in its relations from the very beginning, or are 

 the modifications of animals the result of physical 

 changes ? in other words, has the earth been made and 

 prepared for living beings, or have living beings been as 

 highly developed as was possible, according to the phy- 

 sical vicissitudes of the planet which they inhabit ? 



This question has always been discussed, and that 

 science which cannot look beyond its scalpel, wdll never 

 succeed in resolving it. Each one must seek by his own 

 reason the solution of the great problem. 



When we see the newly-born colt eagerly seeking for 

 its mother's teats, the chick as soon as it is hatched 

 beginning to peck, or the duckling seeking its puddle of 

 water, can we recognize anything but instinct as the 

 cause of these actions, and is not this instinct the libretto 

 written by Him who has forgotten nothing ? 



The statuary who tempers the clay from which to 

 make his model, has already conceived in his mind the 

 statue which he is about to produce. Thus it is with the 

 Supreme Artist. His plan for all eternity is present to 

 His thought. He will execute the work in one day, or in 

 a thousand ages. Time is nothing to Him ; the work is 

 conceived, it is created, and each of its parts is only -the 

 realization of the creative thought, and its predetermined 

 development in time and space. 



** The more we advance in the study of nature," says 

 Oswald Heer in '' Le Monde primitif " which he has just 

 published, "the more profound also is our conviction, that 



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