92 NATURE AND LIFE. 



IV. 



What has gone before is merely an exposition of facts 

 and phenomena of which the discovery is due, in almost all 

 instances, to the use of the microscope, connected with the 

 suggestions of a superior intellect. The great majority of 

 the public knows Robin only in this way, and readily as- 

 sumes that all the merit of that savant consists in his labors 

 in micrography. It pictures him as a man inured to tedious 

 and minute details, not rising above them, leaving the eye- 

 piece of his instrument only on compulsion, with little heed 

 for philosophizing, and systematically indifferent , to doc- 

 'trines. In fact, many micrographers are persons of that 

 kind, and that is the most usual effect of too devoted an 

 intimacy with things infinitely little. By an uncommon 

 exception, the reverse of all this has been Robin's fate. 

 Persistent attention to minute and tiresome realities has 

 enlarged his mind, while enlightening it, to such a degree 

 that his works have contributed as greatly to the advance 

 of ideas as to the progress of facts. 



Robin cherishes the thought that biology might be re- 

 cast and reformed by method, that is, by the introduction 

 of severe logic into studies upon life. Borrowing the ideas 

 of Blainville, Auguste Comte, and Chevreul, upon this diffi- 

 cult subject, adding to them the fruit of his own reflections, 

 he has reduced the mass of biological knowledge to sys- 

 tem, in a manner that is probably definite and final. He 

 has, in part, brought into it the same order which is em- 

 ployed in the simpler sciences, in chemistry, for instance, 

 an order which consists in beginning with the most element- 

 ary, and thence ascending to the most complex. Robin 

 puts at the foundation of biological studies the immediate 

 principles which are the starting-point of all organization, 

 being also the most simple compounds that exist in the 

 organism. This division of the subject bears the name of 



