[1075] Hence he is called by Mr. Owen, ‘the founder of palæontological science.’ Owen on Fossil Mammalia, in Report of Brit. Assoc. for 1843, p. 208. It was in 1796 that there were thus ‘opened to him entirely new views of the theory of the earth.’ p. 209. See also Bakewell's Geology, p. 368; and Milne Edwards, Zoologie, part ii. p. 279. The importance of this step is becoming more evident every year; and it has been justly remarked, that without palæontology there would be, properly speaking, no geology. Balfour's Botany, 1849, p. 591. Sir R. Murchison (Siluria, 1854, p. 366) says, ‘it is essentially the study of organic remains which has led to the clear subdivision of the vast mass of older rocks, which were there formerly merged under the unmeaning term “Grauwacke.”’ In the same able work, p. 465, we are told that, ‘in surveying the whole series of formations, the practical geologist is fully impressed with the conviction that there has, at all periods, subsisted a very intimate connexion between the existence, or, at all events, the preservation of animals, and the media in which they have been fossilized.’ For an instance of this in the old red sandstone, see p. 329.
[1076] Whewell's Hist. of Sciences, vol. iii. p. 679; Lyell's Geol. p. 59. Indeed gneiss received its name from the Germans. Bakewell's Geol. p. 108.
[1077] Compare Conybeare's Report on Geology, p. 371 (Brit. Assoc. for 1832), with Bakewell's Geol. pp. 367, 368, 419, and Lyell's Geol. p. 59.
[1078] In the older half of the secondary rocks, mammals are hardly to be found, and they do not become common until the tertiary. Murchison's Siluria, pp. 466, 467; and Strickland on Ornithology, p. 210 (Brit. Assoc. for 1844). So, too, in the vegetable kingdom, many of the plants in the tertiary strata belong to genera still existing; but this is rarely the case with the secondary strata; while in the primary strata, even the families are different to those now found on the earth. Balfour's Botany, pp. 592, 593. Compare Wilson's additions to Jussieu's Botany, 1849, p. 746; and for further illustration of this remarkable law of the relation between advancing time and diminished similarity, a law suggesting the most curious speculations, see Hitchcock's Geology, p. 21; Lyell's Geology, p. 183; and Owen's Lectures on the Invertebrata, 1855, pp. 38, 576.
[1079] Mr. Geoffroy Saint Hilaire (Anomalies de l'Organisation, vol. i. pp. 121–127) has collected some evidence respecting the opinions formerly held on these subjects. Among other instances, he mentions a learned man named Henrion, an academician, and, I suppose, a theologian, who in 1718 published a work, in which ‘il assignait à Adam cent vingt-trois pieds neuf pouces;’ Noah being twenty feet shorter, and so on. The bones of elephants were sometimes taken for giants: see a pleasant circumstance in Cuvier, Hist. des Sciences, part ii. p. 43.
[1080] ‘Daubenton a le premier détruit toutes ces idées; il a le premier appliqué l'anatomie comparée à la détermination de ces os…. Le mémoire où Daubenton a tenté, pour la première fois, la solution de ce problème important est de 1762.’ Flourens, Travaux de Cuvier, pp. 36, 37. Agassiz (Report on Fossil Fishes, p. 82, Brit. Assoc. for 1842) claims this merit too exclusively for Cuvier, overlooking the earlier researches of Daubenton; and the same mistake is made in Hitchcock's Geol. p. 249, and in Bakewell's Geol. p. 384.
[1081] Even Cuvier held the doctrine of catastrophes; but, as Sir Charles Lyell says (Principles of Geology, p. 60), his own discoveries supplied the means of overthrowing it, and of familiarizing us with the idea of continuity. Indeed it was one of the fossil observations of Cuvier which first supplied the link between reptiles, fishes, and cetaceous mammals. See Owen on Fossil Reptiles, pp. 60, 198, Brit. Assoc. for 1841; and compare Carus's Comparative Anatomy, vol. i. p. 155. To this I may add, that Cuvier unconsciously prepared the way for disturbing the old dogma of fixity of species, though he himself clung to it to the last. See some observations, which are very remarkable, considering the period when they were written, in Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et du Moral, pp. 427, 428: conclusions drawn from Cuvier, which Cuvier would have himself rejected.
[1082] Neither Montesquieu nor Turgot appear to have believed in the possibility of generalizing the past, so as to predict the future; while as to Voltaire, the weakest point in his otherwise profound view of history was his love of the old saying, that great events spring from little causes; a singular error for so comprehensive a mind, because it depended on confusing causes with conditions. That a man like Voltaire should have committed what now seems so gross a blunder, is a mortifying reflection for those who are able to appreciate his vast and penetrating genius, and it may teach the best of us a wholesome lesson. This fallacy was avoided by Montesquieu and Turgot; and the former writer, in particular, displayed such extraordinary ability, that there can be little doubt, that had he lived at a later period, and thus had the means of employing in their full extent the resources of political economy and physical science, he would have had the honour not only of laying the basis, but also of rearing the structure of the philosophy of the history of Man. As it was, he failed in conceiving what is the final object of every scientific inquiry, namely, the power of foretelling the future: and after his death, in 1755, all the finest intellects in France, Voltaire alone excepted, concentrated their attention upon the study of natural phenomena.
[1083] The line of demarcation between anatomy as statical, and physiology as dynamical, is clearly drawn by M. Comte (Philos. Positive, vol. iii. p. 303) and by MM. Robin et Verdeil (Chimie Anatomique, vol. i. pp. 11, 12, 40, 102, 188, 434). What is said by Carus (Comparative Anatomy, vol. ii. p. 356) and by Sir Benjamin Brodie (Lectures on Pathology and Surgery, p. 6) comes nearly to the same thing, though expressed with less precision. On the other hand, M. Milne Edwards (Zoologie, part i. p. 9) calls physiology ‘la science de la vie;’ which, if true, would simply prove that there is no physiology at all, for there certainly is at present no science of life.
[1084] In his Règne Animal, vol. i. pp. vi. vii., he says that preceding naturalists ‘n'avaient guère considéré que les rapports extérieurs de ces espèces, et personne ne s'était occupé de coördonner les classes et les ordres d'après l'ensemble de la structure…. Je dus donc, et cette obligation me prit un temps considérable, je dus faire marcher de front l'anatomie et la zoologie, les dissections et le classement…. Les premiers résultats de ce double travail parurent en 1795, dans un mémoire spécial sur une nouvelle division des animaux à sang blanc.’