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Nature, who might create Platos and Virgils, Newtons and Cuviers, as she creates husbandmen and shepherds, does not see fit to do so; choosing rather to proportion the rarity of genius to the duration of its products, and to balance the number of capacities by the competency of each one of them.
The geological formation of the rocks offers an infinite variety of granites; and the long chains of mountains might keep a hundred of Cuviers busy for life. The limestone caves of Jubblepore are a true ossuary of antediluvian India; they are full of skeletons of monstrous animals, now disappeared for ever.
I like your men of general intelligence well enough, your Linnwuses and your Buffons and your Cuviers; but Cuvier had to go to Latreille for his insects, and if Latreille had been able to consult me, yes, me, gentlemen! he would n't have made the blunders he did about some of the coleoptera.
The battle of organic evolution has been waged by the Darwins, the Huxleys, and the Müllers on the one hand, against the Cuviers, the Owens, and the Virchows on the other. Still, it is not only in biology, as I said just now, that a taste of the Tropics in early life exerts a marked widening and philosophic influence upon a man's whole mental horizon.
Nevertheless, all must admit that they are quite as capable of describing their particular breeds of animals as other nations; and, in fact, we might go farther, and say that they are much more competent to the task than English writers, judging from their extensive knowledge in comparative anatomy, and their long array of celebrated writers on natural history the Cuviers, Buffon, &c.
"Not so, brother," interrupted Lucien; "that is one of the errors of your closet-naturalists your Buffons and Cuviers propagated by them, until it has become proverbial. Strange to say, it is altogether erroneous. It has been proved that vultures possess the sense of smell in a less degree even than most other creatures. Dogs and wolves far excel them in this respect."
I like your men of general intelligence well enough, your Linnwuses and your Buffons and your Cuviers; but Cuvier had to go to Latreille for his insects, and if Latreille had been able to consult me, yes, me, gentlemen! he would n't have made the blunders he did about some of the coleoptera.
But the new teacher, whom I am contemplating in the light of that nebula out of which he will be concentrated, echoes the words of the early persecutor of Christians, that they are the “enemies of the human race.” “But for Athanasius, but for Augustine, but for Aquinas, the world would have had its Bacons and its Newtons, its Lavoisiers, its Cuviers, its Watts, and its Adam Smiths, centuries upon centuries ago.
But an impatient curiosity impelled our steps; crackling and rattling, our feet were trampling on the remains of prehistoric animals and interesting fossils, the possession of which is a matter of rivalry and contention between the museums of great cities. A thousand Cuviers could never have reconstructed the organic remains deposited in this magnificent and unparalleled collection.
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