386 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



Bichat, as Claude Bernard has told us, 1 thus clearly and 

 eloquently found the expression or " formula for the 

 fleeting ideas of his age. All the ideas of his con- 

 temporaries regarding life, all their attempts to define 

 it, are, in a way, only the echo and paraphrase of his 

 doctrine." We find it repeated by surgeons like Pelletau, 

 who practised in the Hotel Dieu, and by great naturalists 

 like Cuvier, who founded comparative anatomy. To both 

 of these life was a contest, a struggle, as it is at the end 

 of the century to the Darwinians ; but it was a struggle 

 of the living forces against the dead, whereas nowadays 

 it is the struggle of the living for supremacy amongst 

 each other or a process of adaptation to external condi- 

 12. tions. Whilst there is this great difference between 



Vitalism and 



Darwinism, these two views characterising respectively the begin- 

 ning and the end of our century, they have one point 

 in common they both emphasise the unrest, the con- 

 tinued change, the extreme mobility which distinguishes 

 living matter. But even this distinction has ceased 

 during the course of the century to impress us so 

 much as it did Bichat ; since the stability of the solar 

 system proclaimed by Laplace has ceased to charm 

 astronomers, and the dictum of ancient science lias 

 been refuted : " materiam coeli esse inalterabilem." ' 



1 ' La Science Expe"rimentale, : mation ; ils auront pareillemeut 

 p. 164. uue periode de decliu. suivie d'une 



2 Claude Bernard (lac. eft., p. ( extinction finale. . . . Les as- 

 172, &c.) dwells on this point with tronomes. avant de connaitre les 

 great eloquence. "Aujourd : hui j lois des mouvements des corps 

 1'esprit des astronomes est familiar- ! celestes, avaient imagine de Ipuis- 

 ise avec 1'idee d'une mobilite et sances, des forces siderales, comme 

 d'une evolution continuelle du , les physiologistes reconnai&saient 

 monde sideral. Les astres n'ont des forces et des puissances vitales. 

 pas toujours existe, dit M. Faye ; j R'epler lui - nieme admettait un 

 ils ont eu uue periode de for- ! esprit recteur sideral par 1'influence 



