374 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 
des différences d’epoques, que les abjurations de 
Boron. a 
The passage quoted by M. Duval is the following 
one: 
‘Surely nothing exists except by the will of the 
Sublime Author of all things. But can we not assign 
him laws in the execution of his will, and determine 
the method which he has followed in this respect ? 
Has not his infinite power enabled him to create an 
order of things which has successively given exist- 
ence to all that we see, as well as to that which ex- 
ists and that of which we have no knowledge? As 
regards the decrees of this infinite wisdom, I have 
confined myself to the limits of a simple observer of 
nature.’’ + 
In other places we find the following expressions: 
‘* There is then, for the animals as for the plants, 
an order which belongs to nature, and which results, 
as also the objects which this order makes exist, 
from the power which it has received from the 
SUPREME AUTHOR of all things. She is herself 
only the general and unchangeable order that this 
Sublime Author has created throughout, and only 
the totality of the general and special laws to which 
this order is subject. By these means, whose use it 
continues without change, it has given and will per- 
petually give existence to its productions; it varies 
and renews them unceasingly, and thus everywhere 
preserves the whole order which is the result of it.’” + 
‘To regard nature as eternal, and consequently 
* Mathias Duval: ‘‘ Le transformiste francais Lamarck,” Bulletin 
de la Société d’ Anthropologie de Paris, xii., 1889, p. 345. 
+ Philosophie zoologique, p. 50. 
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