208 Biographical Notice of 
M. Cuvier follows facts, alike determined both to wait for 
them, however slowly they appear, and to accept the result 
which they yield, whatever that may be, whether the theory 
of successive creations, if the species continue and are found 
everywhere separate and superimposed ; or the theory of a 
unique and simultaneous creation, if he at last finds them 
in some degree united and confounded. 
M. de Blainville takes a great fact, which he transforms 
into a principle; the fact, the unity of the kingdom ; and 
from the unity of the kingdom he boldly infers the unity of 
the creation. 
It is always, on the one hand, the experimental method, 
with its process sure, and its results uncertain ; it is always, 
on the other, the dogmatic method, with its results pre- 
sented as certain, but obtained by a process which is not 
sure. 
The human mind makes use of these methods, and judges 
them. It has this excellent quality, that it never finds 
rest except in the full and entire knowledge of things. It is 
this restlessness for truth—the continuous movement of a 
divine impulse—which forms its strength in labour, and its 
delight in discovery. In the new study in which we are en- 
gaged, a multitude of facts—I mean necessary facts—is still 
wanting to us. We have explored only a part of the globe’s 
surface ; there are places where, in so important an inquiry, 
nature is surprised at not having been examined. It will 
raise up bold observers, who will lay open unknown regions. 
It will raise up new thinkers. The beautiful science of the 
Cuviers and de Blainvilles—for these two names are united 
by the very opposition of their ideas—has brought us at last 
to this important point, of fixing with precision the problem 
which divides it; and this problem of the successive or simul- 
taneous order of created beings, is assuredly the greatest 
which the genius of man has ever conceived in the domain of 
natural history. 
Ideas so exalted and full of allurement having obtained 
the ascendency in his mind, M. de Blainville became less 
and less disposed to condescend to that confiding inter- 
course of friendship which renders life smooth. ‘To excuse 
i 
