The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1

H >> Hippolyte A. Taine >> The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1

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Consequently, in all the details of private life, sensibility
displays its magniloquence. A small temple to Friendship is erected in
a park. A little altar to Benevolence is set up in a private closet.
Dresses à la Jean-Jacques-Rousseau are worn "analogous to the
principles of that author." Head-dresses are selected with "puffs au
sentiment" in which one may place the portrait of one's daughter,
mother, canary or dog, the whole "garnished with the hair of one's
father or intimate friend."[11] People keep intimate friends for whom
"they experience something so warm and so tender that it nearly
amounts to a passion" and whom they cannot go three hours a day
without seeing. "Every time female companions interchange tender ideas
the voice suddenly changes into a pure and languishing tone, each
fondly regarding the other with approaching heads and frequently
embracing," and suppressing a yawn a quarter of an hour after, with a
nap in concert, because they have no more to say. Enthusiasm becomes
an obligation. On the revival of "Le père de famille" there are as
many handkerchiefs counted as spectators, and ladies faint away. "It
is customary, especially for young women, to be excited, to turn pale,
to melt into tears and, generally, to be seriously affected on
encountering M. de Voltaire; they rush into his arms, stammer and
weep, their agitation resembling that of the most passionate
love."[12] - When a society-author reads his work in a drawing-room,
fashion requires that the company should utter exclamations and sob,
and that some pretty fainting subject should be unlaced. Mme. de
Genlis, who laughs at these affectations, is no less affected than the
rest. Suddenly some one in the company is heard to say to the young
orphan whom she is exhibiting: "Pamela, show us Héloise," whereupon
Pamela, loosening her hair, falls on her knees and turns her eyes up
to heaven with an air of inspiration, to the great applause of the
assembly.[13] Sensibility becomes an institution. The same Madame de
Genlis founds an order of Perseverance which soon includes "as many as
ninety chevaliers in the very best society." To become a member it is
necessary to solve some riddle, to answer a moral question and
pronounce a discourse on virtue. Every lady or chevalier who discovers
and publishes "three well-verified virtuous actions" obtains a gold
medal. Each chevalier has his "brother in arms," each lady has her
bosom friend and each member has a device, and each device, framed in
a little picture, figures in the "Temple of Honor," a sort of tent
gallantly decorated, and which M. de Lauzun causes to be erected in
the middle of a garden.[14] - The sentimental parade is complete, a
drawing room masquerade being visible even in this revival of
chivalry.

The froth of enthusiasm and of fine words nevertheless leaves in
the heart a residuum of active benevolence, trustfulness, and even
happiness, or, at least, expansiveness and freedom. Wives, for the
first time, are seen accompanying their husbands into garrison;
mothers desire to nurse their infants, and fathers begin to interest
themselves in the education of their children. Simplicity again forms
an element of manners. Hair-powder is no longer put on little boys'
heads; many of the seigniors abandon laces, embroideries, red heels
and the sword, except when in full dress. People appear in the streets
"dressed à la Franklin, in coarse cloth, with a knotty cane and thick
shoes."[15] The taste no longer runs on cascades, statues and stiff
and pompous decorations; the preference is for the English garden. The
queen arranges a village for herself at the Trianon, where, "dressed
in a frock of white cambric muslin and a gauze neck-handkerchief, and
with a straw hat," she fishes in the lake and sees her cows milked.
Etiquette falls away like the paint scaling off from the skin,
disclosing the bright hue of natural emotions. Madame Adelaide takes
up a violin and replaces an absent musician to let the peasant girls
dance16 The Duchesse de Bourbon goes out early in the morning
incognito to bestow alms, and "to see the poor in their garrets." The
Dauphine jumps out of her carriage to assist a wounded post-boy, a
peasant knocked down by a stag. The king and the Comte d'Artois help a
carter to extract his cart from the mud. People no longer think about
self-constraint, and self-adjustment, and of keeping up their dignity
under all circumstances, and of subjecting the weaknesses of human
nature to the exigencies of rank. On the death of the first
Dauphin,[17] whilst the people in the room place themselves before the
king to prevent him from entering it, the queen falls at his knees,
and he says to her, weeping, "Ah, my wife, our dear child is dead,
since they do not wish me to see him." And the narrator adds with
admiration; "I always seem to see a good farmer and his excellent wife
a prey to the deepest despair at the loss of their beloved child."
Tears are no longer concealed, as it is a point of honor to be a human
being. One becomes human and familiar with one's inferiors. A prince,
on a review, says to the soldiers on presenting the princess to them,
"My boys, here is my wife." There is a disposition to make people
happy and to take great delight in their gratitude. To be kind, to be
loved is the object of the head of a government, of a man in place.
This goes so far that God is prefigured according to this model. The
"harmonies of nature" are construed into the delicate attentions of
Providence; on instituting filial affection the Creator "deigned to
choose for our best virtue our sweetest pleasure."[18] - The idyll
which is imagined to take place in heaven corresponds with the idyll
practiced on earth. From the public up to the princes, and from the
princes down to the public, in prose, in verse, in compliments at
festivities, in official replies, in the style of royal edicts down to
the songs of the market-women, there is a constant interchange of
graces and of sympathies. Applause bursts out in the theater at any
verse containing an allusion to princes, and, a moment after, at the
speech which exalts the merits of the people, the princes return the
compliment by applauding in their turn.[19] - On all sides, just as
this society is vanishing, a mutual deference, a spirit of kindliness
arises, like a soft and balmy autumnal breeze, to dissipate whatever
harshness remains of its aridity and to mingle with the radiance of
its last hours the perfume of dying roses. We now encounter acts and
words of infinite grace, unique of their kind, like a lovely,
exquisite little figure on old Sèvres porcelain. One day, on the
Comtesse Amélie de Boufflers speaking somewhat flippantly of her
husband, her mother-in-law interposes, "You forget that you are
speaking of my son." - "True, mamma, I thought I was only speaking of
your son-in-law." It is she again who, on playing "the boat," and
obliged to decide between this beloved mother-in-law and her own
mother, whom she scarcely knew, replies, "I would save my mother and
drown with my mother-in-law."[20] The Duchesse de Choiseul, the
Duchesse de Lauzun, and others besides, are equally charming
miniatures. When the heart and the mind combine their considerations
they produce masterpieces, and these, like the art, the refinements
and the society which surrounds them, possess a charm unsurpassed by
anything except their own fragility.

III. Personality Defects.

The failings of character thus formed. - Adapted to one situation
but not to a contrary situation. - Defects of intelligence. - Defects
of disposition. - Such a character is disarmed by good-breeding.

The reason is that, the better people have become adapted to a
certain situation the less prepared are they for the opposite
situation. The habits and faculties that serve them in the previous
condition become prejudicial to them in the new one. In acquiring
talents adapted to tranquil times they lose those suited to times of
agitation, reaching the extreme of feebleness at the same time with
the extreme of urbanity. The more polished an aristocracy becomes the
weaker it becomes, and when no longer possessing the power to please
it not longer possesses the strength to struggle. And yet, in this
world, we must struggle if we would live. In humanity, as in nature,
empire belongs to force. Every creature that loses the art and energy
of self-defense becomes so much more certainly a prey according as its
brilliancy, imprudence and even gentleness deliver it over in advance
to the gross appetites roaming around it. Where find resistance in
characters formed by the habits we have just described? To defend
ourselves we must, first of all, look carefully around us, see and
foresee, and provide for danger. How could they do this living as they
did? Their circle is too narrow and too carefully enclosed. Confined
to their castles and mansions they see only those of their own sphere,
they hear only the echo of their own ideas, they imagine that there is
nothing beyond the public seems to consist of two hundred persons.
Moreover, disagreeable truths are not admitted into a drawing-room,
especially when of personal import, an idle fancy there becoming a
dogma because it becomes conventional. Here, accordingly, we find
those who, already deceived by the limitations of their accustomed
horizon, fortify their delusion still more by delusions about their
fellow men. They comprehend nothing of the vast world, which envelops
their little world; they are incapable of entering into the sentiments
of a bourgeois, of a villager; they have no conception of the peasant
as he is but as they would like him to be. The idyll is in fashion,
and no one dares dispute it; any other supposition would be false
because it would be disagreeable, and as the drawing rooms have
decided that all will go well, all must go well. Never was a delusion
more complete and more voluntary. The Duc d'Orléans offers to wager a
hundred louis that the States-General will dissolve without
accomplishing anything, not even abolishing the lettre-de-cachet..
After the demolition has begun, and yet again after it is finished,
they will form opinions no more accurate. They have no idea of social
architecture; they know nothing about its materials, its proportions,
or its harmonious balance; they have had no hand in it, they have
never worked at it. They are entirely ignorant of the old building[21]
in which they occupy the first story. They are not qualified to
calculate either its pressure or its resistance.[[22]] They conclude,
finally, that it is better to let the thing tumble in, and that the
restoration of the edifice in their behalf will follow its own course,
and that they will return to their drawing-room, expressly rebuilt for
them, and freshly gilded, to begin over again the pleasant
conversation which an accident, some tumult in the street, had
interrupted.[23] Clear-sighted in society, they are obtuse in
politics. They examine everything by the artificial light of candles;
they are disturbed and bewildered in the powerful light of open day.
The eyelid has grown stiff through age. The organ so long bent on the
petty details of one refined life no longer takes in the popular life
of the masses, and, in the new sphere into which it is suddenly
plunged, its refinement becomes the source of its blindness.

Nevertheless action is necessary, for danger is seizing them by the
throat. But the danger is of an ignoble species, while their education
has provided them with no arms suitable for warding it off. They have
learned how to fence, but not how to box. They are still the sons of
those at Fontenoy, who, instead of being the first to fire,
courteously raised their hats and addressed their English antagonists,
"No, gentlemen, fire yourselves." Being the slaves of good-breeding
they are not free in their movements. Numerous acts, and those the
most important, those of a sudden, vigorous and rude stamp, are
opposed to the respect a well-bred man entertains for others, or at
least to the respect which he owes to himself. They do not consider
these allowable among themselves; they do not dream of their being
allowed, and, the higher their position the more their rank fetters
them. When the royal family sets out for Varennes the accumulated
delays by which they are lost are the result of etiquette. Madame de
Touzel insists on her place in the carriage to which she is entitled
as governess of the Children of France. The king, on arriving, is
desirous of conferring the marshal's baton on M. de Bouillé, and after
running to and fro to obtain a baton he is obliged to borrow that of
the Duc de Choiseul. The queen cannot dispense with a traveling
dressing-case and one has to be made large enough to contain every
imaginable implement from a warming-pan to a silver porridge-dish,
with other dishes besides; and, as if there were no shifts to be had
in Brussels, there had to be a complete outfit in this line for
herself and her children.[24] - A fervent devotion, even humanness,
the frivolity of the small literary spirit, graceful urbanity,
profound ignorance,[25] the lack or rigidity of the comprehension and
determination are still greater with the princes than with the nobles.
- All are impotent against the wild and roaring outbreak. They have
not the physical superiority that can master it, the vulgar
charlatanism which can charm it away, the tricks of a Scapin to throw
it off the scent, the bull's neck, the mountebank's gestures, the
stentor's lungs, in short, the resources of the energetic temperament
and of animal cunning, alone capable of diverting the rage of the
unchained brute. To find such fighters, they seek three or four men of
a different race and education, men having suffered and roamed about,
a brutal commoner like the abbé Maury, a colossal and dirty satyr like
Mirabeau, a bold and prompt adventurer like that Dumouriez who, at
Cherbourg, when, through the feebleness of the Duc de Beuvron, the
stores of grain were given up and the riot began, hooted at and nearly
cut to pieces, suddenly sees the keys of the storehouse in the hands
of a Dutch sailor, and, yelling to the mob that it was betrayed
through a foreigner having got hold of the keys, himself jumps down
from the railing, seizes the keys and hands them to the officer of the
guard, saying to the people, "I am your father, I am the man to be
responsible for the storehouse!"[26] To entrust oneself with porters
and brawlers, to be collared by a political club, to improvise on the
highways, to bark louder than the barkers, to fight with the fists or
a cudgel, as much later with the young and rich gangs, against brutes
and lunatics incapable of employing other arguments, and who must be
answered in the same vein, to mount guard over the Assembly, to act as
volunteer constable, to spare neither one's own hide nor that of
others, to be one of the people to face the people, all these are
simple and effectual proceedings, but so vulgar as to appear to them
disgusting. The idea of resorting to such means never enters their
head; they neither know how, nor do they care to make use of their
hands in such business.[27] They are skilled only in the duel and,
almost immediately, the brutality of opinion, by means of assaults,
stops the way to polite combats. Their arms, the shafts of the
drawing-room, epigrams, witticisms, songs, parodies, and other needle
thrusts are impotent against the popular bull.[28] Their personality
lacks both roots and resources; through super-refinement it has
weakened; their nature, impoverished by culture, is incapable of the
transformations by which we are renewed and survive. - An all-powerful
education has repressed, mollified, and enfeebled their very
instincts. About to die, they experience none of the reactions of
blood and rage, the universal and sudden restoration of the forces,
the murderous spasm, the blind irresistible need of striking those who
strike them. If a gentleman is arrested in his own house by a Jacobin
we never find him splitting his head open.[29] They allow themselves
to be taken, going quietly to prison; to make an uproar would be bad
taste; it is necessary, above all things, to remain what they are,
well-bred people of society. In prison both men and women dress
themselves with great care, pay each other visits and keep up a
drawing-room; it may be at the end of a corridor, by the light of
three or four candles; but here they circulate jests, compose
madrigals, sing songs and pride themselves on being as gallant, as gay
and as gracious as ever: need people be morose and ill-behaved because
accident has consigned them to a poor inn? They preserve their dignity
and their smile before their judges and on the cart; the women,
especially, mount the scaffold with the ease and serenity
characteristic of an evening entertainment. It is the supreme
characteristic of good-breeding, erected into an unique duty, and
become to this aristocracy a second nature, which is found in its
virtues as well as in its vices, in its faculties as well as in its
impotencies, in its prosperity as at its fall, and which adorns it
even in the death to which it conducts.

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Notes:

[1]. Champfort, 110.

[2]. George Sand, V. 59. "I was rebuked for everything; I never
made a movement which was not criticized."

[3]. "Paris, Versailles, et les provinces," I. 162. - "The king of
Sweden is here; be wears rosettes on his breeches; all is over; he is
ridiculous, and a provincial king." ("Le Gouvernement de Normandie,"
by Hippeau, IV. 237, July 4, 1784.

[4]. Stendhal, "Rome, Naples and Florence," 379. Stated by an
English lord.

[5] Marivaux, "La Petit-Maître corrigé. - Gresset, "Le Méchant."
Crébillon fils, "La Nuit et le Moment," (especially the scene between
the scene between Citandre and Lucinde). - Collé, "La Verité dans le
Vin," (the part of the abbé with the with the présidente). - De
Bezenval, 79. (The comte de Frise and Mme. de Blot). "Vie privée du
Maréchal de Richelieu," (scenes with Mme. Michelin). - De Goncourt,
167 to 174.

[6]. Laclos, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses." Mme. de Merteuil was
copied after a Marquise de Grenoble. - Remark the difference between
Lovelace and Valmont, one being stimulated by pride and the other by
vanity.

[7]. The growth of sensibility is indicated by the following dates:
Rousseau, "Sur l'influence des lettres et des arts," 1749; "Sur
l'inégalité," 1753; "Nouvelle Héloise," 1759. Greuze, "Le Pére de
Famille lisant la Bible," 1755; "L'Accordée de Village," 1761.
Diderot, "Le fils natural," 1757; "Le Pére de Famille," 1758.

[8]. Mme. de Genlis, "Mémoires," chap. XVII. - George Sand, I. 72.
The young Mme. de Francueil, on seeing Rousseaufor the first time,
burst into tears.

[9]. This point has been brought out with as much skill as accuracy
by Messieurs de Goncourt in "L'Art au dix-huitième siècle," I. 433-
438.

[10]. The number for August, 1792, contains "Les Rivaux d'eux-
mêmes." - About the same time other pieces are inserted in the
"Mercure," such as "The federal union of Hymen and Cupid," "Les
Jaloux," "A Pastoral Romance," "Ode Anacréontique à Mlle. S. D. . . .
" etc.

[11]. Mme. de Genlis, "Adéle et Théodore," I. 312. - De Goncourt,
"La Femme an dixhuitième siècle," 318. - Mme. d'Oberkirk, I. 56. -
Description of the puff au sentiment of the Duchesse de Chartres (de
Goncourt, 311): "In the background is a woman seated in a chair and
holding an infant, which represents the Duc de Valois and his nurse.
On the right is a parrot pecking at a cherry, and on the left a little
Negro, the duchess's two pets: the whole is intermingled with locks of
hair of all the relations of Mme. de Chartres, the hair of her
husband, father and father-in-law."

[12]. Mme. de Genlis, "Les Dangers du Monde." I, scène VII; II,
scène IV; - "Adèle et Théodore," I. 312; - "Souvenirs de Félicie,"
199; - Bachaumont, IV, 320.

[13]. Mme. de la Rochejacquelein, "Mémoires."

[14]. Mme. de Genlis, "Mémoires," chap. XX. - De Lauzun, 270.

[15]. Mme. d'Oberkirk, II. 35 (1783-1784). Mme. Campan, III. 371. -
Mercier, "Tableau de Paris," passim.

[16]. "Correspondance" by Métra, XVII. 55, (1784).-- Mme.
d'Oberkirk, II. 234. - "Marie Antoinette," by d'Arneth and Geffroy,
II. 63, 29.

[17]. "Le Gouvernement de Normandie," by Hippeau, IV. 387 (Letters
of June 4, 1789, by an eye-witness).

[18]. Florian, "Ruth".

[19]. Hippeau, IV. 86 (June 23, 1773), on the representation of "Le
Siege de Calais," at the Comédie Française, at the moment when Mlle.
Vestris has pronounced these words:

Le Français dans son prince aime à trouver un frère
Qui, né fils de l'Etat, en devienne le père.

"Long and universal plaudits greeted the actress who had turned in
the direction of the Dauphin." In another place these verses recur:

Quelle leçon pour vous, superbes potentats!
Veillez sur vos sujets dans le rang le plus bas,
Tel, loin de vos regards, dans la misère expire,
Qui quelque jour peut-être, eût sauvé votre empire.

"The Dauphin and the Dauphine in turn applauded the speech. This
demonstration of their sensibility was welcomed with new expressions
of affection and gratitude."

[20]. Madame de Genlis, "Souvenirs de Félicie," 76, 161.

[21]. M. de Montlosier; in the Constituent Assembly, is about the
only person familiar with feudal laws.

[22]. "A competent and impartial man who would estimate the
chances of the success of the Révolution would find that there are
more against it than against the five winning numbers in a lottery;
but this is possible, and unfortunately, this time, they all came out"
(Duc de Lévis, "Souvenirs," 328.)

[23]. "Corinne," by Madame de Staël, the character of the Comte
d'Erfeuil. - Malonet, "Mémoires," II. 297 (a memorable instance of
political stupidity).

[24]. Mme. Campan, II. 140, 313. - Duc de Choiseul, "Mémoires."

[25]. Journal of Dumont d'Urville, commander of the vessel which
transported Charles X. into exile in 1830. - See note 4 at the end of
the volume.

[26]. Dumouriez, "Mémoires," III. chap. III. (July 21, 1789).

[27]. 1 "All these fine ladies and gentlemen who knew so well how
to bow and courtesy and walk over a carpet, could not take three steps
on God's earth without getting dreadfully fatigued. They could not
even open or shut a door; they had not even strength enough to lift a
log to put it on the fire; they had to call a servant to draw up a
chair for them; they could not come in or go out by themselves. what
could they have done with their graces, without their valets to supply
the place of hands and feet?" (George Sand, V. 61.)

[28]. When Madame de F- had expressed a clever thing she felt quite
proud of it. M- remarked that on uttering something clever about an
emetic she was quite surprised that she was not purged. Champfort,
107.

[29]. The following is an example of what armed resistance can
accomplish for a man in his own house. "A gentleman of Marseilles,
proscribed and living in his country domicile, has provided himself
with gun, pistols and saber, and never goes out without this armament,
declaring that he will not be taken alive. Nobody dared to execute the
order of arrest. (Anne Plumptree, "A Residence of three years in
France," (1802-1805), II. 115.

BOOK THIRD. THE SPIRIT AND THE DOCTRINE.

CHAPTER I. SCIENTIFIC ACQUISITION.

The composition of the revolutionary spirit. -- Scientific
acquisition its first element.

On seeing a man with a somewhat feeble constitution, but healthy in
appearance and of steady habits, greedily swallow some new kind of
cordial and then suddenly fall to the ground, foam at the mouth, act
deliriously and writhe in convulsions, we at once surmise that this
agreeable beverage contained some dangerous substance; but a delicate
analysis is necessary to detect and decompose the poison. The
philosophy of the eighteenth century contained poison, and of a kind
as potent as it was peculiar; for, not only is it a long historic
elaboration, the final and condensed essence of the tendency of the
thought of the century, but again its two principal ingredients have
this peculiarity, that, separate, they are salutary, and in
combination they form a venomous compound.

I.SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS.

The accumulation and progress of discoveries in science and in
nature. - They serve as a starting-point for the new philosophers.

The first is scientific discovery, admirable on all sides, and
beneficent in its nature; it is made up of masses of facts slowly
accumulated and then summarily presented, or in rapid succession. For
the first time in history the sciences expand and affirm each other to
the extent of providing, not, as formerly, under Galileo and
Descartes, constructive fragments, or provisional scaffolding, but a
definite and demonstrated system of the universe, that of Newton.[1]
Around this capital fact, almost all the discoveries of the century,
either as complementary or as prolongations, range themselves. In pure
mathematics we have the Infinitesimal Calculus discovered
simultaneously by Leibnitz and Newton, mechanics reduced by d'Alembert
to a single theorem, and that superb collection of theories which,
elaborated by the Bernouillis, Euler, Clairaut, d'Alembert, Taylor and
Maclaurin, is finally completed at the end of the century by Monge,
Lagrange, and Laplace.[2] In astronomy, the series of calculations and
observations which, from Newton to Laplace, transforms science into a
problem of mechanics, explains and predicts the movements of the
planets and of their satellites, indicating the origin and formation
of our solar system, and, extending beyond this, through the
discoveries of Herschel, affording an insight into the distribution of
the stellar archipelagos, and of the grand outlines of celestial
architecture. In physics, the decomposition of light and the
principles of optics discovered by Newton, the velocity of sound, the
form of its undulations, and from Sauveur to Chladni, from Newton to
Bernouilli and Lagrange, the experimental laws and leading theorems of
Acoustics, the primary laws of the radiation of heat by Newton, Kraft
and Lambert, the theory of latent heat by Black, the proportions of
caloric by Lavoisier and Laplace, the first true conceptions of the
source of fire and heat, the experiments, laws, and means by which
Dufay, Nollet, Franklin, and especially Coulomb explain, manipulate
and, for the first time, utilize electricity. - In Chemistry, all
the foundations of the science: isolated oxygen, nitrogen and
hydrogen, the composition of water, the theory of combustion, chemical
nomenclature, quantitative analysis, the indestructibility of matter,
in short, the discoveries of Scheele, Priestley, Cavendish and Stahl,
crowned with the clear and concise theory of Lavoisier. - In
Mineralogy, the goniometer, the constancy of angles and the primary
laws of derivation by Romé de Lisle, and next the discovery of types
and the mathematical deduction of secondary forms by Haüy. - In
Geology, the verification and results of Newton's theory, the exact
form of the earth, the depression of the poles, the expansion of the
equator,[3] the cause and the law of the tides, the primitive fluidity
of the planet, the constancy of its internal heat, and then, with
Buffon, Desmarets, Hutton and Werner, the aqueous or igneous origin of
rocks, the stratifications of the earth, the structure of beds of
fossils, the prolonged and repeated submersion of continents, the slow
growth of animal and vegetable deposits, the vast antiquity of life,
the stripping, fracturing and gradual transformation of the
terrestrial surface,[4] and, finally the grand picture in which Buffon
describes in approximate manner the entire history of our globe, from
the moment it formed a mass of glowing lava down to the time when our
species, after so many lost or surviving species, was able to inhabit
it. - Upon this science of inorganic matter we see arising at the
same time the science of organic matter. Grew, and then Vaillant had
just demonstrated the sexual system and described the fecundating of
plants; Linnaeus invents botanical nomenclature and the first complete
classifications; the Jussieus discover the subordination of
characteristics and natural classification. Digestion is explained by
Réaumur and Spallanzani, respiration by Lavoisier ; Prochaska verifies
the mechanism of reflex actions ; Haller and Spallanzani experiment on
and describe the conditions and phases of generation. Scientists
penetrate to the lowest stages of animal life. Réaumur publishes his
admirable observations on insects and Lyonnet devotes twenty years to
portraying the willow-caterpillar; Spallanzani resuscitates his
rotifers, Tremblay dissects his fresh-water polyps, and Needham
reveals his infusoria. The experimental conception of life is deduced
from these various researches. Buffon already, and especially Lamarck,
in their great and incomplete sketches, outline with penetrating
divination the leading features of modern physiology and zoology.
Organic molecules everywhere diffused or everywhere growing, species
of globules constantly in course of decay and restoration, which,
through the blind and spontaneous development, transform themselves,
multiply and combine, and which, without either foreign direction or
any preconceived end, solely through the effect of their structure and
surroundings, unite together to form those masterly organisms which we
call plants and animals : in the beginning, the simplest forms, and
next a slow, gradual, complex and perfected organization ; the organ
created through habits, necessity and surrounding medium; heredity
transmitting acquired modifications,[5] all denoting in advance, in a
state of conjecture and approximation, the cellular theory of later
physiologists[6] and the conclusions of Darwin.[7] In the picture
which the human mind draws of nature, the general outline is marked by
the science of the eighteenth century, the arrangement of its plan and
of the principal masses being so correctly marked, that to day the
leading lines remain intact. With the exception of a few partial
corrections we have nothing to efface.