LINNAEUS TO LAMARCK 33 



writer of that period exclaims, "Lamarck, thy 

 abandonment, sad as it was in thy old age, is 

 better than the ephemeral glory of men who 

 maintain their reputation by sharing in the 

 errors of their time." As to Cuvier, the one 

 stain on his career is his unworthy attitude to- 

 ward his celebrated opponent and fellow 

 worker. Lamarck had, with his usual generos- 

 ity, aided and favored him when he first came 

 to the Museum of Natural History at Paris, 

 allowing him to hold^ in addition to his own 

 chair, which was in Vertebrate Zoology, the 

 chair of Molluscs, which was in Lamarck's 

 special field, where he had no equal, and which 

 was properly his. But Lamarck opposed, with 

 great politeness and without mentioning his 

 name the attempt made by Cuvier to harmon- 

 ize science with the orthodox theology of his 

 day by means of that theory of "cataclysms" 

 which in spite of its being strenuously de- 

 fended by so recent a thinker as Agassiz, has 

 been relegated to the limbo of exploded theo- 

 ries. 



When Lamarck died, Cuvier as his most 

 notable contemporary was called upon to pro- 

 nounce his eulogy. What a miserable and un- 

 worthy performance it was ! Even after death, 

 religious antipathy — that ever-flowing fountain 

 of meanness — survived in Cuvier's breast, and 



