tTIENNE OEOFFROY SAINT-HILAIRE. 403 



duce miraculous and really uncaused new developments of structure 

 and function — can make a genius spring from nobodies, and a philoso- 

 pher grow at one leap out of two common strains, of the earth, earthy 

 — then we can see no reason why there should not be great families, 

 great epochs, great outbursts in any one place as well as another. 

 But if all increments are functionally acquired, then we can understand 

 why this environment produces races of sculptors, that environment 

 races of poets, yonder environment races of traders, or thinkers, or 

 soldiers, or mechanicians. The first hypothesis is one that throws no 

 light at all upon any of the facts ; the second hypothesis is one that 

 explains them all with transparent lucidity. — Mind. 



■ llTIENNE GEOFFROY SAIKT-HILAIRE. 



THE name of [^tien^ne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire is most inti- 

 mately associated with the establishment of the doctrine of the 

 unity of the organic plan of the animal kingdom. This great natu- 

 ralist was bom at Etampes, France, April 15, 1772, and died in Paris, 

 June 9, 1844. He came of an honorable family, of only a moderate 

 fortune, another branch of which had given three members to the 

 Academy of Sciences. His father, Jean Gerard Geoffroy, an attorney 

 and magistrate, designed him for the ecclesiastical profession. So> 

 after having taken his primary studies at home, he obtained a bursar- 

 ship in the college of Navarre, and, about 1788, a canonry and a bene- 

 fice at ^fitampes. Everything thus promised well for his ecclesiastical 

 advancement ; but he felt drawn toward the natural sciences by an 

 irresistible taste, which the experimental lessons in physics of Brisson 

 had contributed to develop. On leaving the college, he asked per- 

 mission of his father to remain in Paris, to attend the courses of the 

 College de France and the Jardin des Plantes. The father consented, 

 and toward the end of 1790 the young man became a bachelor-in-law. 

 He went no further in this profession, but sought in medicine a calling 

 more congenial to his tastes, without remaining faithful to that. He 

 entered the college of Cardinal-Lemoine as a pensionnaire, where he 

 attracted the notice of Lhomond and Hatty, who were teaching there. 

 Daubenton, whose lectures in the Jardin des Plantes he was attending, 

 remarked him among his pupils, invited him to his house, charged him 

 with commissions relative to the lectures, and intrusted to him the 

 determination of some of the objects in the collections of the Jardin. 

 The French Revolution was now (1792) raging furiously, and all 

 the professors in the college were arrested on the 13th of August for 

 the crime of being priests. Hatty was released on the next day, 

 through the most active exertions of Geoffroy, and Lhomond was 

 delivered by one of his former pupils. The other priests were detained 



