THE HISTORY OF ANATOMICAL SCIENCE 295 



the comparison of the vertebrate and the cepha- 

 lopod types, he was quite hopelessly in the wrong. 

 To anyone possessed of Cuvier's vast know- 

 ledge and dialectic skill, therefore, it was rarely 

 difficult to cut the ground from under his oppo- 

 nents' feet ; to say, in short, whether you are right 

 or wrong, the evidence you adduce in support of 

 your case, where it is not demonstrably contrary 

 to fact, is inadequate, And, in the main, Cuvier 

 has been justified by the larger knowledge of our 

 day. There is no ' unity of organisation ' in the 

 sense maintained by Geoffroy, though there is in 

 another sense. Neither Geoffroy, nor Lamarck, 

 adduced any evidence of the modifiability of 

 species sufficient to overcome the strictly scien- 

 tific arguments adduced on the other side ; and 

 it was not till many years later, that the progress 

 of palaeontology justified the hypothesis of pro- 

 gressive modification, which Geoffroy himself, 

 fully admitting the lack of evidence, put forward 

 merely as a suggestion. 



In later life, however, Cuvier seems to have 

 become so much disgusted by the vagaries of the 

 Naturphilosophie school, and to have been so 

 strongly impressed by the evil which was accruing 

 to science from their example (let those who 

 are disposed to blame him read Oken's ' Physio- 

 philosophy '), that he was provoked into forsaking 

 his former wise and judicious critical attitude ; and, 

 in his turn, he advocated hypotheses, which were 



