&TIENNE AND ISIDORE GEOFFROY. 325 



Etienne and Isidore Geoffroy. 



"Both Cuvier and l^tienne Geoffroy," says Isidore 

 Geoffroy, " had early perceived the philosophical impor- 

 tance of a question (evolution) which must be admitted 

 as with that of unity of composition the greatest in 

 natural history. We find them laying it down in the 

 year 1795 in one of their joint 'Memoirs' (on the 

 Orangs), in the very plainest terms, in the following 

 question, ' Must we see,' they inquire, ' what we 

 commonly call species, as the modified descendants of 

 the same original form ? ' 



" Both were at that time doubtful. Some years 

 afterwards Cuvier not only answered this question in 

 the negative, but declared, and pretended to prove, 

 that the same forms have been perpetuated from the 

 beginning of things. Lamarck, his antagonist jpar excel- 

 lence on this point, maintained the contrary position with 

 no less distinctness, showing that living beings are un- 

 ceasingly variable with change of their surroundings, 

 and giving with some boldness a zoological genesis in 

 conformity with this doctrine. 



"Geoffroy St. Hilaire had long pondered over this 

 difficult subject. The doctrine which in his old age 

 he so firmly defended, does not seem to have been 

 conceived by him till after he had completed his 

 ' Philosophie Anatomique,' and except through lectures 

 delivered orally to the museum and the faculty, it was 

 not published till 1828 ; nor again in the work then 

 published do we find his theory in its neatest expression 

 and fullest development." 



