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Updated: June 13, 2025
But the most elaborate criticisms of the "Origin of Species" which have appeared are two works of very widely different merit, the one by Professor Koelliker, the well-known anatomist and histologist of Wuerzburg; the other by M. Flourens, Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences.
But we cannot leave M. Flourens without calling our readers' attention to his wonderful tenth chapter, "De la Preexistence des Germes et de l'Epigenese," which opens thus: "Spontaneous generation is only a chimera. This point established, two hypotheses remain: that of 'pre-existence' and that of 'epigenesis'. The one of these hypotheses has as little foundation as the other."
Darwin has given, and see nothing there but a "dernière erreur du dernier siècle" a personification of Nature leads us indeed to cry with him: "O lucidité! O solidité de l'esprit Français, que devenez-vous?" M. Flourens has, in fact, utterly failed to comprehend the first principles of the doctrine which he assails so rudely.
A parley ensued, and while it was still in progress, an entire battalion of Mobiles effected an entry by a subterranean passage leading from an adjacent barracks. Delescluze and Flourens then tried to arrange terms with Dorian, but Jules Ferry would accept no conditions. The imprisoned members of the Government were released, and the insurgent leaders compelled to retire.
In the course of these studies Flourens discovered that in the medulla oblongata, the part of the brain which connects that organ with the spinal cord, there is a centre of minute size which cannot be injured in the least without causing the instant death of the animal operated upon.
Accepting these conclusions as correct, the highest recorded age, that of Methuselah, nine hundred years, will be reduced to about two hundred, an age that can hardly be called impossible in the face of such an abundance of reports, to which some men of comparatively modern times have approached, and which such substantial authorities as Buffon, Hufeland, and Flourens believed possible.
One of the warders of the prison, Henrion by name, made some attempt to expostulate with the Vengeurs de Flourens, who had been told off for the execution. "What would you have?" was the answer. "Killing is not at all amusing. We were killing this morning at the Prefecture of Police. But they say this is reprisal. The Versaillais have been killing our generals."
To other demands made by Flourens, evasive replies were returned, whereupon he indignantly resigned his command of the Belleville men, but resumed it at their urgent request.
This conclusion, which incidentally gave a quietus to phrenology, was accepted generally, and became the stock doctrine of cerebral physiology for a generation. It will be seen, however, that these studies of Flourens had a double bearing. They denied localization of cerebral functions, but they demonstrated the localization of certain nervous processes in other portions of the brain.
And this is the way M. Flourens extinguishes natural selection: "Voyons donc encore une fois, ce qu'il peut y avoir de fonde dans ce qu'on nomme 'election naturelle'. "'L'election naturelle' n'est sous un autre nom que la nature. Pour un etre organise, la nature n'est que l'organisation, ni plus ni moins.
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