128 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



28. 



Into this 

 centre 

 Cuvier car- 

 ried exact 

 research. 



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." l 



Into the centre of individual and organised life the 

 life of the animal and human creation Cuvier carried 

 exact research, grounding it on the science of compara- 

 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. 



2 Cuvier, in the Introduction to 

 ' Le Regne animal, distribue d'apres 

 son organisation, pour servir de base 

 a 1'histoire naturelle des animaux 

 et d 'introduction a 1'anatomie com- 

 pareV (Paris, 1817), says that for 

 thirty years he had devoted to com- 

 parative anatomy all his time (p. 

 v), that the first results had ap- 

 peared in 1795, his ' Lecons d' Ana- 

 tomic comparee' in 1800 (p. vii), 

 that he has made anatomy and zool- 



ogy march side by side (p. vi). He 

 compares natural history as a science 

 with other sciences, stating that 

 dynamics is become a science almost 

 entirely of calculation, that chem- 

 istry is still a science altogether of 

 experiments, that natural history 

 will for a long time to come remain 

 in most of its parts a science of ob- 

 servation (p. 5) ; he maintains that 

 geometry is a study of syllogisms, 

 natural history a study of method 

 (p. xviii). 



