128 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



culties which only great zeal can surmount ; we have 

 to subject them to torments in order to appreciate their 

 physical powers ; their innermost energies only reveal 

 themselves to the dissecting-knife only by living among 

 corpses can we discover them. Among them we find the 

 same spectacle as in the world, whatever moralists may 

 say: they are hardly less wicked or less unhappy than 

 we are ; the arrogance of the strong, the meanness of 

 the weak, vile rapacity, short pleasures bought by great 

 efforts death brought on by long suffering that is the 

 rule among animals as much as among men. With 

 plants existence is not surrounded by pain no sad 

 image tarnishes their splendour before our eyes, nothing 

 reminds us of our passions, our cares, our misfortunes 

 love is there without jealousy, beauty without vanity, 

 force without tyranny, death without anguish nothing 

 resembles human nature." 1 



2s. Into the centre of individual and organised life the 



centre life of the animal and human creation Cuvier carried 



Cuvier car- 

 ried exact exact research, grounding it on the science of compara- 

 researcb. 



tive anatomy. 2 At the same time, he marked out as the 

 principal problem, around which all investigations must 

 turn, and upon which all classification must depend, 



1 'Elogeshistoriques,' vol. i. p. 91. ogy march side by side (p. vi). He 



2 Cuvier, in the Introduction to compares natural history as a science 



' Le Regne animal, distribue d'aprts 

 son organisation, pour servir de base 

 a 1'histoire naturelle des animaux 



with other sciences, stating that 

 dynamics is become a science almost 

 entirely of calculation, that chem- 



et d'introduction a 1'anatomie com- j istry is still a science altogether of 



parde ' (Paris, 1817), says that for , experiments, that natural history 



thirty years he had devoted to com- I will for a long time to come remain 



parative anatomy all his time (p. in most of its parts a science of ob- 



v), that the first results had ap- servation (p. 5) ; he maintains that 



peared in 1795, his ' Lemons d'Ana- geometry is a study of syllogisms, 



tomie compare'e' in 1800 (p. vii), natural history a study of method 



that he has made anatomy and zool- (p. xviii). 



