History of Civilization in England, Vol. 2 of 3

1074

This comprehensiveness of Cuvier is justly remarked by M. Flourens as the leading characteristic of his mind. Flourens, Hist. des Travaux de Cuvier, pp. 76, 142, 306: ‘ce qui caractérise partout M. Cuvier, c'est l'esprit vaste.’

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.’

1085

On the opposition between the methods of Linnæus and of Cuvier, see Jenyns' Report on Zoology, pp. 144, 145, in Brit. Assoc. for 1834.

1086

The foundations of this celebrated arrangement was laid by Cuvier, in a paper read in 1795. Whewell's History of the Induc. Sciences, vol. iii. p. 494. It appears, however (Flourens, Travaux de Cuvier, pp. 69, 70), that it was in, or just after, 1791, that the dissection of some mollusca suggested to him the idea of reforming the classification of the whole animal kingdom. Compare Cuvier, Règne Animal, vol. i. pp. 51, 52 note.

1087

The only formidable opposition made to Cuvier's arrangement has proceeded from the advocates of the doctrine of circular progression: a remarkable theory, of which Lamarck and Macleay are the real originators, and which is certainly supported by a considerable amount of evidence. Still, among the great majority of competent zoologists, the fourfold division holds its ground, although the constantly-increasing accuracy of microscopical observations has detected a nervous system much lower in the scale than was formerly suspected, and has thereby induced some anatomists to divide the radiata into acrita and nematoneura. Owen's Invertebrata, 1855, pp. 14, 15; and Rymer Jones's Animal Kingdom, 1855, p. 4. As, however, it seems probable that all animals have a distinct nervous system, this subdivision is only provisional; and it is very likely that when our microscopes are more improved, we shall have to return to Cuvier's arrangement. Some of Cuvier's successors have removed the apodous echinoderms from the radiata; but in this Mr. Rymer Jones (Animal Kingdom, p. 211) vindicates the Cuverian classification.

1088

We may except Aristotle; but between Aristotle and Bichat I can find no middle man.

1089

But not exclusively. Mr. Blainville (Physiol. comparée, vol. ii. p. 304) says, ‘celui qui, comme Bichat, bornait ses études à l'anatomie humaine;’ and at p. 350, ‘quand on ne considère que ce qui se passe chez l'homme, ainsi que l'a fait Bichat.’ This, however, is much too positively stated. Bichat mentions ‘les expériences nombreuses que j'ai faites sur les animaux vivans.’ Bichat, Anatomie Générale, vol. i. p. 332; and for other instances of his experiments on animals below man, see the same work, vol. i. pp. 164, 284, 311, 312, 326, vol. ii. pp. 13, 25, 69, 73, 107, 133, 135, 225, 264, 423, vol. iii. pp. 151, 218, 242, 262, 363, 364, 400, 478, 501, vol. iv. pp. 27, 28, 34, 46, 229, 247, 471: see also Bichat, Recherches sur la Vie, pp. 262, 265, 277, 312, 336, 356, 358, 360, 368, 384, 400, 411, 439, 455, 476, 482, 494, 512: and his Traité des Membranes, pp. 48, 64, 67, 130, 158, 196, 201, 224. These are all experiments on inferior animals, which aided this great physiologist in establishing those vast generalizations, which, though applied to man, were by no means collected merely from human anatomy. The impossibility of understanding physiology without studying comparative anatomy, is well pointed out in Mr. Rymer Jones's work, Organization of the Animal Kingdom, 1855, pp. 601, 791.

1090

Mr. Swainson (Geography and Classification of Animals, p. 170) complains, strangely enough, that Cuvier ‘rejects the more plain and obvious characters which every one can see, and which had been so happily employed by Linnæus, and makes the differences between these groups to depend upon circumstances which no one but an anatomist can understand.’ See also p. 173: ‘characters which, however good, are not always comprehensible, except to the anatomist.’ (Compare Hodgson on the Ornithology of Nepal, in Asiatic Researches, vol. xix. p. 179, Calcutta, 1836.) In other words, this is a complaint that Cuvier attempted to raise zoology to a science, and, therefore, of course, deprived it of some of its popular attractions, in order to invest it with other attractions of a far higher character. The errors introduced into the natural sciences by relying upon observation instead of experiment, have been noticed by many writers; and by none more judiciously than M. Saint Hilaire in his Anomalies de l'Organisation, vol. i. p. 98.

1091

It is very doubtful if Bichat was acquainted with the works of Smyth, Bonn, or Fallopius, and I do not remember that he any where even mentions their names. He had, however, certainly studied Bordeu; but I suspect that the author by whom he was most influenced was Pinel, whose pathological generalizations were put forward just about the time when Bichat began to write. Compare Bichat, Traité des Membranes, pp. 3, 4, 107, 191; Béclard, Anat. Gén. pp. 65, 66; Bouillaud, Philos. Médicale, p. 26; Blainville, Physiol. comparée, vol. i. p. 284, vol. ii. pp. 19, 252; Henle, Anat. Gén. vol. i. pp. 119, 120.

1092

Biog. Univ. vol. iv. pp. 468, 469.

1093

For a list of the tissues, see Bichat, Anat. Gén. vol. i. p. 49. At p. 50 he says, ‘en effet, quel que soit le point de vue sous lequel on considère ces tissus, ils ne se ressemblent nullement: c'est la nature, et non la science, qui a tiré une ligne de démarcation entre eux.’ There is, however, now reason to think, that both animal and vegetable tissues are, in all their varieties, referrible to a cellular origin. This great view, which M. Schwann principally worked out, will, if fully established, be the largest generalization we possess respecting the organic world, and it would be difficult to overrate its value. Still there is danger lest, in prematurely reaching at so vast a law, we should neglect the subordinate, but strongly-marked differences between the tissues as they actually exist. Burdach (Traité de Physiologie, vol. vi. pp. 195, 196) has made some good remarks on the confusion introduced into the study of tissues, by neglecting those salient characteristics which were indicated by Bichat.

1094

Pinel says, ‘dans on seul hiver il ouvrit plus de six cents cadavres.’ Notice sur Bichat, p. xiii., in vol. i of Anat. Gén. By such enormous labour, and by working day and night in a necessarily polluted atmosphere, he laid the foundation for that diseased habit which caused a slight accident to prove fatal, and carried him off at the age of thirty-one. ‘L'esprit a peine à concevoir que la vie d'un seul homme puisse suffire à tant de travaux, à tant de découvertes, faites ou indiquées: Bichat est mort avant d'avoir accompli sa trente-deuxième année!’ Pinel, p. xvi.

1095

To this sort of comparative anatomy (if it may be so called), which before his time scarcely existed, Bichat attached great importance, and clearly saw that it would eventually become of the utmost value for pathology. Anat. Gén. vol. i. pp. 331, 332, vol. ii. pp. 234–241, vol. iv. p. 417, &c. Unfortunately these investigations were not properly followed up by his immediate successors; and Müller, writing long after his death, was obliged to refer chiefly to Bichat for ‘the true principles of general pathology.’ Müller's Physiology, 1840, vol. i. p. 808. M. Vogel too, in his Pathological Anatomy, 1847, pp. 398, 413, notices the error committed by the earlier pathologists, in looking at changes in the organs, and neglecting those in the tissues; and the same remark is made in Robin et Verdeil, Chimie Anatomique, 1853, vol. i. p. 45; and in Henle, Traité d'Anatomie, vol. i. p. vii., Paris, 1843. That ‘structural anatomy,’ and ‘structural development,’ are to be made the foundations of pathology, is, moreover, observed in Simon's Pathology, 1850, p. 115 (compare Williams's Principles of Medicine, 1848, p. 67), who ascribes the chief merit of this ‘rational pathology’ to Henle and Schwann: omitting to mention that they only executed Bichat's scheme and (be it said with every respect for these eminent men) executed it with a comprehensiveness much inferior to that displayed by their great predecessor. In Broussais, Examen des Doctrines Médicales, vol. iv. pp. 106, 107, there are some just and liberal observations on the immense service which Bichat rendered to pathology. See also Béclard, Anatomie, Paris, 1852, p. 184.

1096

Bichat, Anat. Gén. vol. i. pp. 51, 160, 161, 259, 372, vol. ii. pp. 47, 448, 449, vol. iii. pp. 33, 168, 208, 309, 406, 435, vol. iv. pp. 21, 52, 455–461, 517.

1097

According to M. Comte (Philos. Pos. vol. iii. p. 319), no one had thought of this before Bichat. MM. Robin et Verdeil, in their recent great work, fully admit the necessity of employing this singular resource. Chimie Anatomique, 1853, vol. i. pp. 18, 125, 182, 357, 531.

1098

‘Dès-lors il créa une science nouvelle, l'anatomie générale.’ Pinel sur Bichat, p. xii. ‘A Bichat appartient véritablement la gloire d'avoir conçu et surtout exécuté, le premier, le plan d'une anatomie nouvelle.’ Bouillaud, Philos. Médicale, p. 27. ‘Bichat fut le créateur de l'histologie en assignant des caractères précis à chaque classe de tissus.’ Burdach, Physiologie, vol. vii. p. 111. ‘Le créateur de l'anatomie générale fut Bichat.’ Henle, Anatomie, vol. i. p. 120. Similar remarks will be found in Saint-Hilaire, Anomalies de l'Organisation, vol. i. p. 10; and in Robin et Verdeil, Chimie Anat. vol. i. p. xviii., vol. iii. p. 405.

1099

In Béclard, Anat. Gén. 1852, p. 61, it is said that ‘la recherche de ces tissus élémentaires, ou éléments organiques, est devenue la préoccupation presque exclusive des anatomistes de nos jours.’ Compare Blainville, Physiol. Gén. et Comp. vol. i. p. 93: ‘Aujourd'hui nous allons plus avant, nous pénétrons dans la structure intime, non seulement de ces organes, mais encore des tissus qui concourent à leur composition; nous faisons en un mot de la véritable anatomie, de l'anatomie proprement dite.’ And at p. 105: ‘c'est un genre de recherches qui a été cultivé avec beaucoup d'activité, et qui a reçu une grande extension depuis la publication du bel ouvrage de Bichat.’ See also vol. ii. p. 303.

In consequence of this movement, there has sprung up, under the name of Degenerations of Tissues, an entirely new branch of morbid anatomy, of which, I believe, no instance will be found before the time of Bichat, but the value of which is now recognized by most pathologists. Compare Paget's Surgical Pathology, vol. i. pp. 98–112; Williams's Principles of Medicine, pp. 369–376; Burdach's Physiologie, vol. viii. p. 367; Reports of Brit. Assoc. vol. vi. p. 147; Jones's and Sieveking's Pathological Anatomy, 1854, pp. 154–156, 302–304, 555–558. ‘They are,’ say these last writers, ‘of extremely frequent occurrence; but their nature has scarcely been recognized until of late.’

1100

Cuvier completely neglected the study of tissues; and in the very few instances in which he mentions them, his language is extremely vague. Thus, in his Règne Animal, vol. i. p. 12, he says of living bodies, ‘leur tissu est donc composé de réseaux et de mailles, ou de fibres et de lames solides, qui renferment des liquides dans leurs intervalles.’

1101

A well-known ornithologist makes the same complaint respecting the classification of birds. Strickland on Ornithology, Brit. Assoc. for 1844, pp. 209, 210. Even in regard to living species, Cuvier (Règne Animal, vol. ii. p. 126) says: ‘La classe des poissons est de toutes celle qui offre le plus de difficultés quand on veut la subdiviser en ordres d'après des caractères fixes et sensibles.’

1102

The discoveries of M. Agassiz are embodied in his great work, Recherches sur les Poissons fossiles: but the reader who may not have an opportunity of consulting that costly publication, will find two essays by this eminent naturalist, which will give an idea of his treatment of the subject, in Reports of Brit. Assoc. for 1842, pp. 80–88, and for 1844, pp. 279–310. How essential this study is to the geologist, appears from the remark of Sir R. Murchison (Siluria, 1854, p. 417), that ‘fossil fishes have everywhere proved the most exact chronometers of the age of rocks.’

1103

That they were composed of fibres, was the prevailing doctrine, until the discovery of their tubes, in 1835, by Purkinjé. Before Purkinjé, only one observer, Leeuwenhœk, had announced their tubular structure; but no one believed what he said, and Purkinjé was unacquainted with his researches. Compare Nasmyth's Researches on the Teeth, 1839, p. 159; Owen's Odontography, 1840–1845, vol. i. pp. ix. x.; Henle, Anat. Gén. vol. ii. p. 457; Reports of Brit. Assoc. vol. vii. pp. 135, 136 (Transac. of Sections).

1104

Mr. Nasmyth, in his valuable, but, I regret to add, posthumous work, notices, as the result of these discoveries, ‘the close affinity subsisting between the dental and other organized tissues of the animal frame.’ Researches on the Development, &c. of the Teeth, 1849, p. 198. This is, properly speaking, a continuation of Mr. Nasmyth's former book, which bore the same title, and was published in 1839.

1105

This name, which Mr. Owen appears to have first suggested, has been objected to, though, as it seems to me, on insufficient grounds. Compare Owen's Odontography, vol. i. p. iii., with Nasmyth's Researches, 1849, pp. 3, 4. It is adopted in Carpenter's Human Physiol. 1846, p. 154; and in Jones and Sieveking's Patholog. Anat. 1854, pp. 483, 486.

1106

See the correspondence in Brit. Assoc. for 1841, Sec., pp. 2–23.

1107

In the notice of it in Whewell's Hist. of Sciences, vol. iii. p. 678, nothing is said about Mr. Nasmyth; while in that in Wilson's Human Anatomy, p. 65, edit. 1851, nothing is said about Mr. Owen. A specimen of the justice with which men treat their contemporaries. Dr. Grant (Supplement to Hooper's Medical Dict. 1848, p. 1390) says, ‘the researches of Mr. Owen tend to confirm those of Mr. Nasmyth.’ Nasmyth, in his last work (Researches on the Teeth, 1849, p. 81), only refers to Owen to point out an error; while Owen (Odontography, vol. i. pp. xlvi.–lvi.) treats Nasmyth as an impudent plagiarist.

1108

Dr. Whewell (Hist. of Induc. Sciences, vol. iii. p. 678) says, that ‘he has carried into every part of the animal kingdom an examination, founded upon this discovery, and has published the results of this in his Odontography.’ If this able, but rather hasty writer, had read the Odontography, he would have found that Mr. Owen, so far from carrying the examination ‘into every part of the animal kingdom,’ distinctly confines himself to ‘one of the primary divisions of the animal kingdom’ (I quote his own words from Odontography, vol. i. p. lxvii.), and appears to think, that below the vertebrata, the inquiry would furnish little or no aid for the purposes of classification.

1109

But in comparing the merits of discoverers themselves, we must praise him who proves rather than him who suggests. See some sensible remarks in Owen's Odontography, vol. i. p. xlix.; which, however, do not affect my observations on the superiority of method.

1110

By a new method of inquiring into a subject, I mean an application to it of generalizations from some other subject, so as to widen the field of thought. To call this a new method, is rather vague; but there is no other word to express the process. Properly speaking, there are only two methods, the inductive and the deductive; which, though essentially different, are so mixed together, as to make it impossible wholly to separate them. The discussion of the real nature of this difference I reserve for my comparison, in the next volume, of the German and American civilizations.