Antoine' Laurent Jussieu. 23 



does botany. In animals, the organs are much more distinct, 

 the functions more marked, and, consequently, the subordina- 

 tion of characters more evident. The modifications of the ex- 

 ternal organs in them, in a conspicuous manner, depend upon 

 the modifications of the internal organs ; the brain, the heart, 

 and the lungs, for example, cannot change without the other 

 parts, necessarily correlative to these, also changing ; the rea- 

 son of this strict concordance between all the modifications 

 of the animal economy is palpable, for the principle of the 

 subordination of organs becomes in them the very principle of 

 the conditions of the existence of beings. But, m addition, the 

 science of characters, by its application to zoology, has assumed 

 a wider and more elevated bearing. Arrangement has per- 

 fected itself, by becoming more general, and by extending it- 

 self from one of the kingdoms of oi'ganized natm'e to another ; 

 and this by the labours of two authors, who, compai'ed to- 

 gether, present very distinct traces, whereby the whole is per- 

 fected. Jussieu pursued a protracted chain of details, with 

 unwearied patience and indefatigable sagacity. Cuvier, by 

 rapid strides, reached the ultimate consequences, overleaping 

 what was intermediate ; it was the character of the one never 

 to be disheartened in experimental observation, the only one, 

 in fact, which is applicable to botany ; and of the other, to 

 seize, at a glance, the natural method, which best suits zoology ; 

 together, they supplied a new logical energy to human thought, 

 the energy of arrangement, which, consisting in the union of 

 objects according to their common qualities, is truly to the 

 science of observation, what analysis, or the act of decom- 

 posing them into their distinct elements, is to the experimen- 

 tal sciences. And in the same way as analysis, originating 

 from the experiments of Galileo, has gradually passed from 

 the physical sciences into the more general science of the 

 understanding (entendement), thereby becoming the philoso- 

 phical analysis of Condillac, so the arrangement or method pro- 

 duced l)y the researches of modern naturalists, is about to 

 produce similar effects upon the abstract study of philosophy ; 

 and it is only after this has been effected, that general philo- 

 sophy, — the result, not less of the art of classifying ideas, 

 which has hitherto been neglected, than of the art of decom- 



