6 THE INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS. 



against it. It has to-day come out of the struggle 

 victoriously. A prodigious quantity of facts, of com- 

 parative anatomy and of embryology, inexplicable 

 without it, emerge from the chaos and constitute 

 a whole, truly and marvellously homogeneous. Issued 

 from the natural sciences, the doctrine of evolution 

 now overflows them and tends to embrace everything 

 that concerns man : history, sociology, political econ- 

 omy, psychology. The moralists seek, and will surely 

 find, compromises permitting ethical laws to endure 

 the rule of this overwhelming hypothesis. 



Without going too far back into history, let us 

 look towards the end of the last century and the 

 beginning of this. Cuvier, Lamarck,^ and Geoffroy 

 Saint-Hilaire,2 all preoccupied with general ideas, 

 were each trying to build up a doctrine. The theory 

 of evolution was born beneath the pen of Lamarck, 

 but immediately fell under the attacks of Cuvier.^ 

 It is to Darwin that the honour belongs of having 

 rescued it from oblivion and of having initiated the 

 movement which to-day rules the natural sciences. 

 Studies in embryology and anatomy are rising with- 

 out number beneath this impulse ; and perhaps it 

 may be said that these new sciences, so fruitful in 

 results, absorb a little too much attention and leave in 

 the shade subjects longer known, but which, however, 

 gain new interest by the way they fit into present 

 scientific theories. 



I wish to speak of the manners of animals ; the 



1 Philosopkie %oologique, 2® edition, Paris, 1830; Histoire des 

 Aiiimaux sans Vertibres, Introduction, 1835. 



^ Philosophie analomique, 1818; Zoologie ghierale, 1841. 



^ Le Rkgne Animal, 1829 ; Lefons <P Anatomie comparh, 2e Edition, 

 1835-46. 



