256 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



sophical, task. Both thinkers were right, but only par- 

 tially right, as Huxley has clearly shown ; l but it was 

 natural that Cuvier's position should for a long time be 

 regarded as the stronger; since he had shown how, by 

 detailed research, to increase enormously the stock of 

 actual knowledge about the things of nature ; whereas 

 the uncritical and only half practical suggestions of 

 Goethe had undergone in the wild speculations of 

 Schelling, Steffens, and Oken a development that fright- 

 ened off men of exact thought. Cuvier saw the necessity 

 of crying halt to these vague dreams which he had the 

 merit of opposing, for the lasting benefit of true science, 

 with the full force of his great authority. 2 



As in France and Germany so also in England, the 

 tendency to distinguish minutely, to describe, to classify, 

 and in doing so to fill the museums with new specimens, 



1 ' Life of Owen,' vol. ii. p. 296 : 

 "The irony of history is nowhere 

 more apparent than in science. 

 Here we see the men over whose 

 minds the coming events of the 

 world of biology cast their shadows, 

 doing their best to spoil their case 

 in stating it ; while the man who 

 represented sound scientific method 

 is doing his best to stay the inevit- 

 able progress of thought and bolster 

 up antiquated traditions. The pro- 

 gress of knowledge during the last 

 seventy years enables us to see that 

 neither Geoffroy nor Cuvier was 

 altogether right nor altogether 

 wrong ; and that they were meant 

 to hunt in couples instead of pull- 

 ing against one another." 



2 As to Cuvier's own wavering on 

 the great question of the fixity of 

 species, see Huxley, loc. cit. , p. 294 : 

 "During the earlier part of his 

 career, I doubt if Cuvier would 

 have categorically denied any of 



Geoffrey's fundamental theses. And 

 even in his later years Sir Charles 

 Lyell, many years ago, gave me 

 reasons for the opinion that Cuvier 

 was by no means confident about 

 the fixity of species. There was 

 never any lack of the scientific im- 

 agination about the great anato- 

 mist ; and the charge of indifference 

 to general ideas, sometimes brought 

 against him, is stupidly unjust." 

 And further, p. 295 : " In later life, 

 however, Cuvier seems to have be- 

 come so much disgusted by the 

 vagaries of the Naturphilosophie 

 school, and to have been so strongly 

 impressed by the evil which was 

 accruing to science from their ex- 

 ample, that he was provoked into 

 forsaking his former wise and 

 judicious critical attitude ; and in 

 his turn he advocated hypotheses 

 which were none the better than 

 those of his opponents." 



