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 
NaHirphilosophie school, and to have been so 
strongly impressed by the evil which was accruing 
to science from their e.xample (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 
