THE HISTORY OF ANATOMICAL SCIENCE 297 



sound and well fitted together ; of some to spur 

 investigators and of others to keep their heads 

 cool. The only would-be servants, who are en- 

 tirely unprofitable, are those who do not take the 

 trouble to interrogate Nature, but imagine vain 

 things about her ; and spin, from their inner con- 

 sciousness, webs, as exquisitely symmetrical as 

 those of the most geometrical of spiders, but, 

 alas ! as easily torn to pieces by some uncon- 

 sidered bluebottle of a fact. 



Naturally, it is Cuvier, in his capacity of the 

 man of business, who has been held in almost 

 exclusive veneration by those (and they are 

 always the majority) who engage in merely add- 

 ing to the capital stock of science. For them, 

 he has done everything and is the highest of 

 exemplars. And justly, for Cuvier's monographs, 

 and the osteological treatises interpolated in the 

 ■ Ossemens Fossiles,' are of unsurpassed excel- 

 lence ; while, for the sagacious application of the 

 data of osteology to the interpretation of fossil 

 remains, he has never had a superior. Again, 

 Cuvier's clear logical head and marvellously wide 

 acquaintance with animal forms enabled him to 

 reform classification ; and to set forth, in the 

 ' Regne Animal,' a generalized statement of the facts 

 of animal structure which was, in itself, a sufficient 

 refutation of the doctrine of unity of organisation 

 as it was conceived by Goethe and Geoffroy. 

 The mere quantity of the palaeontological work 



