PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 13 



into another, how is it the case, that no anatomist, physiologist, or 

 naturrJist of any description whatever, has, from the very commence- 

 ment, devoted his mind to this other order of phenomena ? It was 

 necessary to have avoided every remembrance of the circumstance of 

 this transformation, involving as it did an absolute miracle to believe 

 that a mind capable of conceiving it could, for an instant, resist the 

 ascendancy of such a sentiment, and that, the instant when he re- 

 cognised it, he would not, at once, apply himself to the forming of a 

 radical revolution in all the sciences which, far and near, have animals 

 for their subject ; and now this transformation is proclaimed anew, 

 but nothing of the like of what we anticipated is threatened to be 

 done. 



We fall back, therefore, on the ordinary supposition, that this idea only 

 fails to produce its effect, because the age is not at its highest point of 

 refinement, and because the idea has been promulgated too prematurely 

 to be as yet comprehended ; in a word, it is with this idea as it was with 

 those of Galileo on the motion of the earth. Very nearly a century 

 has passed since De Maillet's reveries were presented to the public. 

 In 1778, Buffon published his Epochs of Nature, and Lamarck, more 

 than thirty years ago, proceeded to revive the ideas of his predeces- 

 sors. Nobody will imagine that science has remained stationary since 

 that period, and yet, at this hour, these ideas remain the same as 

 in the middle of the eighteenth century, as in the era of Buffon, and 

 as in the time of Lamarck, for not only has no fact been discovered, 

 which could render this transformation at all probable, but nothing 

 has even been suggested that can afford to this theory the slightest 

 countenance ; on the contrary, the whole of the facts are against it 

 in every natural phenomenon in which it is sought, and in whatever 

 it is attempted to be detected. 



If I have been understood in the criticism now given of a system 

 which I should have preferred leaving to the support of others, I 

 have reason to believe that the world will consider my brother, at 

 least, excusable for having declined to adopt those ideas, since to his 

 mind, which always yearned for truth and light, they must have ap- 

 peared surrounded with doubts and obscurities. 



I have limited myself to the examination of two questions, which 

 have just occupied me ; namely, the antiquity of the human race, and 

 the transformation of animal species from the one into the other, 



these being the only ones that have been directly pointed against 

 opinions which all have sanctioned, and still sanction at this day. I 



