66 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 
profound spirit, to be read before the French Academy 
of Sciences, what a eulogy it was—as De Blainville 
exclaims, e¢ guel cloge/ It was not printed until 
after Cuvier’s death, and then, it is stated, portions 
were omitted as not suitable for publication.* This 
is, we believe, the only stain on Cuvier’s life, and it 
was unworthy of the great man. In this eoge, so 
different in tone from the many others which are col- 
lected in the three volumes of Cuvier’s eulogies, he 
indiscriminately ridicules all of Lamarck’s theories. 
Whatever may have been his condemnation of La- 
marck’s essays on physical and chemical subjects, he 
might have been more reserved and less dogmatic 
and sarcastic in his estimate of what he supposed to 
be the value of Lamarck’s views on evolution. It 
was Cuvier’s adverse criticisms and ridicule and _ his 
anti-evolutional views which, more than any other 
single cause, retarded the progress of biological 
science and the adoption of a working theory of 
evolution for which the world had to wait half a 
century. 
It even appears that Lamarck was in part instru- 
mental in inducing Cuvier in 1795 to go to Paris from 
Normandy, and become connected with the Museum. 
De Blainville relates that the Abbé Tessier met the 
young zoélogist at Valmont near Fécamp, and wrote 
to Geoffroy that “he had just discovered in Nor- 
* De Blainville states that ‘‘the Academy did not even allow it to 
be printed in the form in which it was pronounced” (p. 324); and 
again he speaks of the lack of judgment in Cuvier’s estimate of La- 
marck, ‘‘ the naturalist who had the greatest force in the general con- 
ception of beings and of phenomena, although he might often be far 
from the path” (p. 323). 
