INTEODUCTION . XXI 



offered any demonstration of these views. This is what the 

 world looks for, and rightly expects ; rigid demonstration 

 supported the Newtonian hypothesis, else Newton had written 

 in vain. Pallisset, the potter, had said as much as Buffon, but, 

 like him, he had offered no demonstration, and the world 

 looked on them as dreamers dangerous dreamers of whom 

 the less notice that was taken the better. In Britain, espe- 

 cially, Buffon's works appeared stripped of all their lofty 

 views, disfigured, and degraded : he passed, even in France, 

 merely as the naturalist who had best described the hot- 

 blooded quadrupeds, as certain mammals were called even in 

 my days ; the bold conjectures of Pallisset and of Buffon 

 seemed about to disappear for ever from the field of science. 

 Goethe had failed to resuscitate them under other forms. The 

 geological theories of Hutton and Play fair were met success- 

 fully by the plausible hypothesis of Werner ; when suddenly a 

 man appeared, destined to place natural science for ever on a 

 basis which, if not so fixed as the Elements of Euclid, will at 

 the least prove as enduring. That man was George Cuvier, a 

 German, born on French soil ; an anatomist. This wonderful 

 man, of a rigidly demonstrative turn of mind, when quite 

 young, but well educated, bethought him of investigating 

 " the unknown" in Zoology by means of anatomical research, 

 the only way in which it could be inquired into. Linnd and 

 Buffon had described and defined the exterior : " I will inves- 

 tigate," he said, " the interior :" they ought to correspond ; 

 there must be intimate relations between them; harmony; ad- 

 justments. Seemingly, and without being aware of it, he had 

 discovered a new element of research descriptive anatomy ; 

 not the vague comparative anatomy of Perrault or Dauben- 

 ton, but minute descriptive anatomy, worthy of Hunter and 

 of himself. Yet he was very young, and knew nothing of 

 Hunter, and but little of Daubenton. Genius directed his 

 steps, that genius which, when it appears, and happily escapes 

 the crushing influences " of established socialisms," forms its 

 age. Like most of the great men of his day (products of the 



