202 Biographical Notice of 
bestow, and he saw accomplished the destiny he had traced 
out for himself, when he told Cuvier, in one of his spites 
against him, ‘I shall one day have a chair in the Institute 
and Museum of Natural History, by the side of you, in front 
of you, and in spite of you.” 
In spite of you was unjust, for animosity did not exist ; 
but it would have diminished his gratification if he had . 
ceased to believe in it; only experience had proved to M. 
Cuvier the difficulty of intercourse with him, and made him 
doubt the practicability of it. 
M. de Blainville had reached that age when a man of 
superior mind feels the need of uniting his ideas together by 
a philosophical bond of connection. 
His long-continued studies in Zoology had led him to per- 
ceive in the whole animal kingdom only a continuous series of 
beings which, becoming with each degree more animated, 
more sensible, more intelligent, rise from animals of the low- 
est grade up to man himself. This grand view was that of 
Aristotle in ancient times, and it has been that of Leibnitz 
in modern days. | 
«* The continuity of gradations,’ Aristotle finely remarks, 
“ covers the limits which separate beings, and withdraws 
from the eye the point which divides them.” 
“‘T love maxims which support themselves,” said Leibnitz. 
Weknow that in order to obtain such he had thought of bring- 
ing them all to one. His philosophy has only one principle, 
that of continuity. Each being in the globe we inhabit is 
connected with all others, and the globe itself with all other 
globes. “ With M. Leibnitz,”’ said Fontenelle, “ one should 
have seen the extremity or end of things, or that they have 
no end,” , , 
Never has a philosophical idea undergone greater vicissi- 
tudes than that of the scale of beings. All the naturalists of 
the eighteenth century admit it. ‘The progress of nature 
takes place by insensible degrees,” Buffon tells us. ‘“ Nature 
makes no sudden leaps,’ exclaims Linneus. Bonnet ex- 
hausts himself in simple efforts to discover everywhere in- 
termediate, equivocal beings, which should fill up the voids. 
Cuvier appeared, and the entire idea of continuity or se- 
