No More Learning

"To me
too," it is said in a comedy by Eupolis, "this Socrates is offens-
ive: this beggarly talker, who has considered everything with
hair-splitting ingenuity; the only matter which he has left uncon-
sidered is the question how he will get a dinner to-day. " Far
more serious were the attacks of Aristophanes. His standpoint,
as well as that of Eupolis and Cratinus, was the ancient Attic
view of life: he regarded the teachers of philosophy, round whom
the young men gathered, as the ruin of the State; and although
he could not possibly mistake the difference between Socrates
and the Sophists,—although moreover he by no means belonged
to the personal enemies of Socrates, with whom he rather seems
to have enjoyed a certain degree of intimacy,- yet he thought it
both his right and his duty, as a poet and a patriot, to combat
in Socrates the Sophist, nay, the most dangerous of Sophists.
The Athenian of the old school hated these conversations extend-
ing through whole hours of the broad daylight, during which the
young men were kept away from the palæstræ; these painful
discussions of topics of morality and politics, as to which it
behooved every loyal citizen to have made up his mind once for
all. If everything was submitted to examination, everything was
also exposed to rejection; and what was to become of the city, if
only that was to be allowed as valid which found gracious ac-
ceptance at the hands of this or that professor of talk? If
everything had to be learnt, if everything was to be acquired by
reflection, then there was an end of true civic virtue, which
ought to be a thing inborn in a citizen and secured by his train-
ing as such. In these days all action and capability of action.


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4244
was being dissolved into an idle knowledge; the one-sided culti-
vation of the intellect was loosening the sinews of men, and
making them indifferent to their country and religion. From
this standpoint the poet rejects all such culture of youth as is
founded upon the testing of the mind, and leading it to perfect
knowledge, and lauds those young Athenians who do not care
for wasting their time by sitting and talking with Socrates.
The priestly party, again, was adverse to Socrates, although
the highest authority in religious matters which existed in Hel-
las, and had at all events not been superseded by any other,
had declared in his favor,- at the suggestion of Chærephon,
who from his youth up was attached with devoted affection to
his teacher. His was an enthusiastic nature; and he desired
nothing so ardently as that the beneficent influence which he
had experienced in his own soul might be shared by the largest
possible number of his fellow-citizens. For this reason he was
anxious for an outward recognition of the merits of his so fre-
quently misjudged friend; and he is said to have brought home
from Delphi the oracle which declared Socrates to be the wisest
of all men. Now, although this oracle was incapable of giving
a loftier assurance of his mission to the philosopher himself,
although it could not even remove the antipathy of the public,
yet it might be expected that it would disarm the calumny rep-
resenting Socrates as a teacher of dangerous heresies; and in
this sense he could not but personally welcome the Delphic
declaration. For it must be remembered that he continued to
regard the oracle as the reverend centre of the nation, as the
symbol of a religious communion among the Hellenes; and in
disallowing all presumptuous meditation on the right way of
venerating the gods, he entirely followed the precedent of the
Delphic oracle, which was in the habit of settling questions of
this kind by the answer that it was according to the usage of
their fathers that men should venerate the gods. At Delphi,
on the other hand, there could be no question as to the import-
ance of one who was leading the revolted world back to rever-
ence for things holy, and who, while his contemporaries were
derisively despising the obsolete ways of the past, and running
after the ignes fatui of the wisdom of the day, held up be-
fore their eyes the primitive sayings of the temples; a serious
consideration of which he declared to be sufficient to reveal
the treasure of immortal truth contained in them. If it was


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confessedly impossible to put an end to the prevailing desire
for independent inquiry, then the priests could not but acknowl-
edge that this was the only way by which the old religion could.
be saved.
Even the recognition by Delphi, however, was unable to pro-
tect Socrates against the suspicion of heresy. The fanaticism of
the priestly party increased in inverse ratio to its prospects of
real success; it regarded any philosophical discussion of religious
truths as a desecration, and placed Socrates on the same level as
Diagoras. Finally, the democrats, who after the restoration of
the constitution were the ruling party, hated philosophy, because
out of its school had issued a large proportion of the oligarchs;
not only Critias and Theramenes, but also Pythodorus the archon
of the days of anarchy, Aristoteles one of the Four Hundred and
of the Thirty, Charmides, and others, were known as men of
philosophical culture. Philosophy and the tendency towards
political reaction accordingly seemed to be necessarily connected
with one another. In a word, Socrates found opposition every-
where: some deemed him too conservative and others too liberal;
he had against him both the Sophists and the enemies of the
Sophists, both rigid orthodoxy and infidelity, both the patriots of
the old school and the representatives of the renovated democ-
racy.
Notwithstanding all this hostile feeling, the personal security
of Socrates was not endangered, because he pursued his path as
a blameless man, and because it was a matter of conscience with
him to avoid every offense against the law. But after the res-
toration of the constitution a variety of circumstances continued
to imperil his position at Athens.
SOCRATES AS AN INFLUENCE AND AS A MAN
From the History of Greece ›
IF
WE Contemplate Socrates in his whole way of living and
being (and in truth no other personage of Greek antiquity is
so distinctly brought before our eyes), it seems to us in the
first place as if at Athens he were not in his natural place; so
foreign to Athens are his ways, and so dissociated from it is
his whole individuality. He cannot be fitted into any class of


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Athenian civil society, and is to be measured by no such stand-
ard as we apply to his fellow-citizens. He is one of the poorest
of all the Athenians, and yet he passes with a proud step
through the streets of the city and confronts the richest and
best born as their equal; his ungainly and neglected exterior
makes him an object of public derision, and yet he exercises an
unexampled influence upon high and low, upon learned and
unlearned alike. He is a master both of thought and of speech,
yet at the same time an opponent on principle of those who
were the instructors of the Athenians in both; he is a man of
free thought, who allows nothing to remain untested, and yet he
is more diligent in offering sacrifices than any of his neighbors,
he venerates the oracles, and reposes a simple faith in many
things which the age laughs at as nursery tales; he blames
without reticence the dominion of the multitude, and yet is an
adversary of oligarchs. Entirely his own master, he thinks dif-
ferently from all other Athenians; he goes his own path with-
out troubling himself about public opinion; and so long as he
remains in harmony with himself, no contradiction, no hostile
attack, no derision vexes his soul. Such a man as this seemed
in truth to have been transplanted into the midst of Athens as
it were from some other world.
And yet, unique in his kind as this Socrates was, we are
unable on closer examination to mistake him for aught but a
genuine Athenian. Such he was in his whole intellectual tend-
ency, in his love of talk and skill in talk,-growths impossible
in any but Athenian air,- in the delicate wit with which he con-
trived to combine the serious and the sportive, and in his
unflagging search after a deep connection between action and
knowledge. He was a genuine Athenian of the ancient stamp,
when with inflexible courage he stood forth as the champion of
the laws of the State against all arbitrary interference, and in
the field shrank from no danger or hardship. He knew and
loved the national poets; but above all it is in his indefatigable
impulse towards culture that we recognize the true son of his
native city. Herein lay a spiritual affinity between him and the
noblest among the Athenians, a Solon and a Pericles. Socrates,
like Solon, thought that no man is too old to learn; that to learn
and to know is not a schooling for life, but life itself, and that
which alone gives to life its value. To become by knowledge
better from day to day, and to make others better, appeared to


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both to be the real duty of man.
Both found the one true hap-
piness in the health of the soul, whose greatest unhappiness they
held to lie in wrong and ignorance.
Thus with all his originality Socrates most decidedly stood on
the basis of Attic culture; and if it is taken into consideration
that the most celebrated representatives of Sophistry and the
tendencies akin to it all came from abroad,-e. g. , Protagoras
from Abdera, Prodicus from Ceos, Diagoras from Melos,—it may
fairly be affirmed that as against these foreign teachers the best
principles of Attic wisdom found their representative in Socrates.
Far, however, from merely recurring to the ancient foundations.
of patriotic sentiment,-fallen into neglect to the great loss of the
State,― and from opposing himself on an inflexible defensive to
the movement of the age, he rather stood in the very midst of
it; and merely sought to lead it to other and higher ends.
What he desired was not a turning back, but a progress in
knowledge beyond that which the most sagacious teachers of
wisdom offered. For this reason he was able to unite in himself
elements which seemed to others irreconcilably contradictory;
and upon this conception was based what most distinguished him
above all his fellow countrymen, the lofty freedom and inde-
pendence of his mind. Thus, without becoming disloyal to his
home, he was able to rise above the restrictions of customary
ideas; which he most notably achieved by making himself per-
fectly independent of all external things, in the midst of a
people which worshiped the beauty of outward appearance, and
by attaching value exclusively to the possessions which are
within, and to moral life. For this reason too his personal ugli
ness the broad face with the snub nose, thick lips and promi-
nent eyes—was a characteristic feature of his individuality;
because it testified against the traditional assumption of a neces-
sary union between physical and intellectual excellence; because
it proved that even in a form like that of Silenus there might
dwell a spirit like that of Apollo, and thus conduced to a loftier
conception of the being of man. Thus he belonged to his people
and to his age, but stood above both; and such a man the
Athenians needed, in order to find the path whereon it was
possible to penetrate through the conflict of opinions to a moral
assurance, and to reach a happiness containing its own warrant.
Socrates appears before us as an individuality complete and
perfect, of which the gradual development continues to remain
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a mystery. Its real germ, however, doubtless lies in the desire
for knowledge, which was innate in him with peculiar strength.
This desire would not allow him to remain under pupilage to
his father: it drove him forth out of the narrow workshop into
the streets and the open places of the city, where in those days
every kind of culture, art, and science, was offered in rich
abundance; for at the time when Socrates was in his twentieth
year, Pericles stood at the height of his splendid activity, which
the son of a sculptor might be supposed to have had occasion
fully to appreciate. The youthful Socrates however brought with
him out of his father's house a certain one-sided and so to
speak bourgeois tendency, -i. e. , a sober homely sense for the
practically useful, which would not allow itself to be dazzled by
splendor and magnificence. Accordingly he passed by with tol-
erable indifference the much admired works of art with which
the city was at that time filled; for the ideal efforts of the
Periclean age he lacked comprehension; nor do the tragedies of
a Sophocles appear to have exercised much attraction upon him.
If there was one-sidedness in this, on the other hand it bore
good fruit in so far as it confirmed the independence of his
judgment, and enabled him to recognize and combat the defects
and diseases from which Athens suffered even in the midst of
her glories.
But although the son of Sophroniscus carried the idea of the
practically useful into the domain of science, he gave to it in
this so deep and grand a significance that for him it again
became an impulse towards searching with unflagging zeal for
all real means of culture offered by Athens; for he felt the
impossibility of satisfactorily responding to the moral tasks which
most immediately await man, without the possession of a con-
nected knowledge. Thus he eagerly associated with men and
women esteemed as highly cultured; he listened to the lectures
of the Sophists; acquainted himself with the writings of the
earlier philosophers, which he found to be still of vital effect
upon his contemporaries; thoroughly studied with friends desirous
of self-improvement the works of Heraclitus and Anaxagoras;
and in this constant intercourse he gradually became himself
another man,-i. e. , he grew conscious of the unsatisfactory
standpoint of the wisdom of the teachers of the day, as well as
conscious of his own aims and mission. For in putting questions
of a kind which could meet with no reply, and in searching for


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4249
deeper things than could be offered to him by his hearers, he
gradually became himself the person from whom the impulse
proceeded, and from whom in the end was expected an answer
to the questions which had remained unsolved. He, the seeker
after instruction, became the centre of a circle of younger men
who were enthusiastically attached to him. In how high a
degree that which he endeavored to supply corresponded to the
deeply felt needs of the age, is evident from the fact that men
of the most utterly different dispositions and stations in life gave
themselves up to him: youths of the highest class of society, full
of self-consciousness, buoyancy, and reckless high spirits, such
as Alcibiades; and again, men of a melancholy and timid turn of
mind, such as the well-known eccentric Apollodorus of Phalerus,
who, perpetually discontented with himself and others, led a
miserable existence until in Socrates he found the sole individu-
ality appeasing his wants, and in intercourse with him the satis-
faction for which he had longed. To him Socrates was all in
all, and every hour during which he was away from Socrates he
accounted as lost. Thus Socrates was able to re-awaken among
the Athenians-among whom personal intercourse between those
of the same age, as well as between men and youths, was dis-
turbed or desecrated either by party interests or by impure
sensuality the beneficent power of pure friendship and unselfish
devotion. Sober and calm himself, he excited the noblest enthu-
siasm, and by the simplest means obtained a far-reaching influ-
ence such as before him no man had possessed at Athens; even
before the Peace of Nicias, when Aristophanes made him the
principal character in his 'Clouds,' he was one of the best known
and most influential personages at Athens.
As Socrates gradually became a teacher of the people, so his
mode and habits of life, too, formed themselves in indissoluble
connection with his philosophical development. For this was the
most pre-eminent among his qualities: that his life and his teach-
ings were formed in the same mold, and that none of his dis-
ciples could say whether he had been more deeply affected by
the words or by the example of his master.
And this was con-
nected with the fact that from the first his philosophy directed
itself to that which might make man better and more pleasing
to Heaven, freer and happier at once. To this tendency he could
not devote himself without rising in his own consciousness to a
continuously loftier clearness and purity, and without subjecting
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to reason the elements inborn in him, of sensual impulses, of
inertia and passion. Thus he became a man in whom the
world found much to smile and mock at, but whom even those
who could not stomach his wisdom were obliged to acknowledge
as a morally blameless and just citizen. He was devoted with
absolute loyalty to his native city, and without desiring offices
and dignities, he was from an inner impulse indefatigably active
for her good.
For the rest, Socrates, with all his dislike of the pursuit of
profit and pleasure, was anything but a morose eccentric like
Euripides; from this he was kept by his love of humankind.
He was merry with the merry; and spoilt no festive banquet to
which he had been bidden. In the friendly circle he sat as a
man brave at his cups, and herein likewise offered an example to
his friends how the truly free can at one time suffer deprivation,
and at another enjoy abundance, without at any time losing his
full self-control. After a night of festivity his consciousness was
as clear and serene as ever; he had after a rare fashion made
his body an ever ready servant of his mind; even physically he
could do things impossible to others, and as if protected by some
magic charm, he passed unhurt through all the pestilences of
Athens without ever timidly keeping out of the way of danger.
Fully assured of the inner mission which animated him, he
allowed nothing to derange or to confound him. Hostile attacks
and derision touched him not; nay, he was known to laugh most
heartily of all the spectators when that sinner Aristophanes
exhibited him as a dreamer, abstracted from the world and hang-
ing in a hammock between heaven and earth; and when the
other comic poets made the public merry with his personal
appearance. For the same reason, lastly, he was inaccessible to
all the offers made to him by foreign princes, who would have
given much to attract the most remarkable man of the age to
their courts. The Thessalian grandees in particular, Scopas at
Crannon and Eurylochus at Larissa, emulated one another in
their endeavors to secure him. But he was no more tempted by
their gold than by that of Archelaus, the splendor of whose
throne, obtained by guile and murder, failed to dazzle Socrates.
He replied with the pride of a genuine republican that it ill
befitted any man to accept benefits which he had no power of
returning.


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4251
CUVIER
(1769-1832)
BY SPENCER TROTTER
M
ODERN zoological science is indebted, in a large measure, to
the mind and labor of the three French savants-Lamarck,
Saint-Hilaire, and Cuvier. Throughout the troubled times
of the French Revolution these three friends and co-laborers pursued
their studies, arranging and interpreting the facts which they accu-
mulated, and enriching the literature of the science to which they
devoted their lives. Of the three, Cuvier stands forth with greatest
prominence to-day as the one who by his studies in the structure and
classification of animals, and through
his reconstruction of the fossil ani-
mals of the Paris Basin, has left the
most enduring mark upon the litera-
ture of the subject.
George Leopold Christian Frederic
Dagobert Cuvier was born at Montbé-
liard in Alsace, on the 23d of August,
1769. His mother devoted herself to
the careful training and development
of his growing mind, and in very
early life he gave evidence of extraor-
dinary intellectual endowment. Nat-
urally in dustrious, and possessed of a
remarkable memory and the power
of concentration, young Cuvier by
the age of fourteen had mastered the
rudiments of several languages, both
ancient and modern, had acquired a considerable knowledge of math-
ematics, had read widely in history, and was proficient in drawing.
He very early showed a decided bent toward scientific pursuits,
and drew his first inspiration from the works of Buffon, who was
then at the zenith of his fame. While at school he formed a society
among his fellows for the reading and discussion of various subjects
of a scientific and literary nature. Cuvier's talents became known
to Prince Charles, the reigning Duke of Würtemberg, who gave him
a free education in the University of Stuttgart. After completing his

CUVIER


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CUVIER
4252
university course with honor he sought for a public office under the
government of Prince Charles, but his parents' circumstances (his
father being a retired officer of a Swiss regiment in the service of
France) forced him to abandon this idea, and at the age of nineteen
he accepted the position of a tutor in the family of a nobleman who
resided at Caen in Normandy.
This proved to be the determining event in Cuvier's life. He
found in the mollusk fauna of the near-by sea-coast a fascinating
subject for study, and devoted all of his spare time to the investiga-
tion of the structure and relations of the various forms that came to
his notice. The Abbé Tessier, a member of the Academy of Sciences,
who had fled to Normandy from Paris during the Reign of Terror,
made the acquaintance of the young naturalist, and introduced him
by correspondence to a number of the most eminent scientific men of
Paris. One of these men was Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire; and through his
influence Cuvier was invited to assist Mertrud, the professor of com-
parative anatomy in the Museum of Natural History at the Jardin des
Plantes. From this time on he threw all the energies of his re-
markable mind into the study of animals and the building up of the
Museum. The collections which he originated rank among the finest
in the world. In 1802 Cuvier was appointed one of six inspector-
generals to organize lyceums in a number of the French towns,
and ever after gave a great part of his time and thought to the
subject of education. The influence of his work in this direction is
felt to-day in every institution of public instruction throughout France.
On the annexation of Italy he made three different visits to that
country in order to reorganize the old academies, and although a
Protestant he was intrusted with the organization of the University
at Rome. In a similar manner he remodeled the educational systems
throughout Holland and Belgium; and his reports on these questions
are teeming with interest. Cuvier felt that the strength of a nation
lay in the sound education of all classes, the lower as well as the
upper; and to his enlightened views may be traced much of the
excellent system of primary education that prevails in these countries
to-day. Under the bigoted Bourbon government, the despotic rule of
Napoleon, and the liberal reign of Louis Philippe, Cuvier maintained
his post; and throughout the events of the Hundred Day of 1815 he
still held a high position in the Imperial University, of which he had
been made a life member of the council at its foundation in 1808.
He held a distinguished place as a member of the Council of State,
as Minister of the Interior, as Chancellor of the University, and
member of the Protestant faculty of theology. Louis Philippe con-
ferred on him the title of Baron. He lived at the Jardin des Plantes,
surrounded by his family and friends, and his home was the centre


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CUVIER
4253
of men of science from all parts of the world. On the 8th of May,
1832, after delivering an unusually eloquent introductory lecture at
the College of France, he was stricken with paralysis; and though he
rallied sufficiently to preside the next day at the Council of State, he
died on the following Sunday.
The chief value of Cuvier's work in general literature lies in the
philosophical deductions which he drew from his studies. Lamarck
had advanced the theory of the origin of species as a result of the
action of the natural conditions of existence impressing and molding
the plastic organism. Saint-Hilaire had advanced the doctrine of
"homology," i. e. , the same structure appearing in a different form
in different animals as a result of a difference of function. Cuvier
opposed both of these theories, holding that each animal was a sep-
arate and distinct result of a special creative act, and that each part
of its organization was expressly created to meet certain wants.
Though the point of view of these three friends differed, yet each
held the germ of truth. The action of the environment and the doc-
trine of homology are vital questions to-day; and Cuvier's deductions
are equally pregnant with the truth, only their author viewed the
facts as special creative acts of the Divine intelligence. Probably the
most wide-reaching effects of Cuvier's work came from his study and
restoration of the fossil animals of the Paris Basin, and the conse-
quent recognition of the Tertiary as a distinct geological age. From
his investigations in comparative anatomy he proved "that the parts
of an animal agree so exactly that from seeing one fragment the
whole can be known. " This recognition of the correlation of parts
was one of the grandest achievements of his master mind.
Cuvier's scientific publications were numerous. His best known
works are 'Le Règne Animal' (The Animal Kingdom), published in
four octavo volumes in 1817, and 'Recherches sur les Ossements Fos-
siles (Inquiry Concerning Fossil Bones). This latter work is prob-
ably the most enduring monument to his fame, as it laid the basis of
the present science of palæontology. The first volume of this work
is a masterpiece of scientific literature, and has been widely trans-
lated. The English translation by Professor Jameson of Edinburgh,
entitled 'Essay on the Theory of the Earth,' has passed through
several editions.
Frenser Frotter.
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4254
CUVIER
OF CHANGES IN THE STRUCTURE OF THE EARTH
From The Theory of the Earth'
THE
HE lowest and most level parts of the earth, when penetrated
to a very great depth, exhibit nothing but horizontal strata
composed of various substances, and containing almost all
of them innumerable marine productions. Similar strata, with
the same kind of productions, compose the hills even to a great
height. Sometimes the shells are so numerous as to constitute
the entire body of the stratum. They are almost everywhere in
such a perfect state of preservation that even the smallest of
them retain their most delicate parts, their sharpest ridges, and
their finest and tenderest processes. They are found in eleva-
tions far above the level of every part of the ocean, and in
places to which the sea could not be conveyed by any existing
cause. They are not only inclosed in loose sand, but are often
incrusted and penetrated on all sides by the hardest stones.
Every part of the earth, every hemisphere, every continent, every
island of any size, exhibits the same phenomenon. We are there-
fore forcibly led to believe not only that the sea has at one
period or another covered all our plains, but that it must have
remained there for a long time, and in a state of tranquillity;
which circumstance was necessary for the formation of deposits
so extensive, so thick, in part so solid, and containing exuviæ
so perfectly preserved.
A
The time is past for ignorance to assert that these remains
of organized bodies are mere lusus naturæ,-productions gener-
ated in the womb of the earth by its own creative powers.
nice and scrupulous comparison of their forms, of their context-
ure, and frequently even of their composition, cannot detect the
slightest difference between these shells and the shells which
still inhabit the sea. They have therefore once lived in the sea,
and been deposited by it; the sea consequently must have rested
in the places where the deposition has taken place. Hence it is
evident the basin or reservoir containing the sea has undergone
some change at least, either in extent, or in situation, or in
both. Such is the result of the very first search, and of the
most superficial examination.
The traces of revolutions become still more apparent and de-
cisive when we ascend a little higher, and approach nearer to


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CUVIER
4255
the foot of the great chains of mountains. There are still found
many beds of shells; some of these are even larger and more
solid; the shells are quite as numerous and as entirely pre-
served: but they are not of the same species with those which
were found in the less elevated regions. The strata which con-
tain them are not so generally horizontal; they have various
degrees of inclination, and are sometimes situated vertically.
While in the plains and low hills it was necessary to dig deep
in order to detect the succession of the strata, here we perceive
them by means of the valleys which time or violence has pro-
duced, and which disclose their edges to the eye of the observer.
At the bottom of these declivities huge masses of their débris
are collected, and form round hills, the height of which is aug-
mented by the operation of every thaw and of every storm.
These inclined or vertical strata, which form the ridges of the
secondary mountains, do not rest on the horizontal strata of the
hills which are situated at their base and serve as their first
steps; but on the contrary are situated underneath them. The
latter are placed upon the declivities of the former. When we
dig through the horizontal strata in the neighborhood of the
inclined strata, the inclined strata are invariably found below.
Nay sometimes, when the inclined strata are not too much ele-
vated, their summit is surmounted by horizontal strata. The
inclined strata are therefore more ancient than the horizontal
strata. And as they must necessarily have been formed in a
horizontal position, they have been subsequently shifted into
their inclined or vertical position, and that too before the hori-
zontal strata were placed above them.
Thus the sea, previous to the formation of the horizontal
strata, had formed others which by some means have been
broken, lifted up, and overturned in a thousand ways. There
had therefore been also at least one change in the basin of that
sea which preceded ours; it had also experienced at least one
revolution: and as several of these inclined strata which it had
formed first are elevated above the level of the horizontal strata
which have succeeded and which surround them, this revolution,
while it gave them their present inclination, had also caused
them to project above the level of the sea so as to form islands,
or at least rocks and inequalities; and this must have happened
whether one of their edges was lifted up above the water, or the
depression of the opposite edge caused the water to subside.
•


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4256
CUVIER
This is the second result, not less obvious nor less clearly dem-
onstrated than the first, to every one who will take the trouble
of studying carefully the remains by which it is illustrated and
proved.
If we institute a more detailed comparison between the vari-
ous strata and those remains of animals which they contain, we
shall soon discover still more numerous differences among them,
indicating a proportional number of changes in their condition.
The sea has not always deposited stony substances of the same.
kind. It has observed a regular succession as to the nature of
its deposits: the more ancient the strata are, so much the more
uniform and extensive are they; and the more recent they are,
the more limited are they, and the more variation is observed in
them at small distances. Thus the great catastrophes which have
produced revolutions in the basin of the sea were preceded,
accompanied, and followed by changes in the nature of the fluid
and of the substances which it held in solution; and when the
surface of the seas came to be divided by islands and projecting
ridges, different changes took place in every separate basin.
Amidst these changes of the general fluid, it must have
been almost impossible for the same kind of animals to continue
to live; nor did they do so in fact. Their species, and even
their genera, change with the strata: and though the same spe-
cies occasionally recur at small distances, it is generally the
case that the shells of the ancient strata have forms peculiar to
themselves; that they gradually disappear, till they are not to be
seen
en at all in the recent strata, still less in the existing seas,
in which indeed we never discover their corresponding species,
and where several, even of their genera, are not to be found;
that on the contrary the shells of the recent strata resemble,
as respects the genus, those which still exist in the sea; and
that in the last formed and loosest of these strata there are
some species which the eye of the most expert naturalists can-
not distinguish from those which at present inhabit the ocean.
In animal nature, therefore, there has been a succession of
changes corresponding to those which have taken place in the
chemical nature of the fluid; and when the sea last receded from
our continent, its inhabitants were not very different from those
which it still continues to support.
Finally, if we examine with greater care these remains of
organized bodies, we shall discover, in the midst even of the


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4257
most ancient secondary strata, other strata that are crowded with
animal or vegetable productions, which belong to the land and
to fresh water; and amongst the most recent strata - that is, the
strata which are nearest the surface-there are some of them in
which land animals are buried under heaps of marine produc-
tions. Thus the various catastrophes of our planet have not only
caused the different parts of our continent to rise by degrees
from the basin of the sea, but it has also frequently happened
that lands which had been laid dry have been again covered by
the water, in consequence either of these lands sinking down
below the level of the sea, or of the sea being raised above the
level of the lands. The particular portions of the earth also,
which the sea has abandoned by its last retreat, had been laid
dry once before, and had at that time produced quadrupeds,
birds, plants, and all kinds of terrestrial productions; it had then
been inundated by the sea, which has since retired from it and
left it to be occupied by its own proper inhabitants.
The changes which have taken place in the productions of
the shelly strata, therefore, have not been entirely owing to a
gradual and general retreat of the waters, but to successive
irruptions and retreats, the final result of which, however, has
been an universal depression of the level of the sea.
These repeated irruptions and retreats of the sea have been
neither slow nor gradual; most of the catastrophes which have
occasioned them have been sudden: and this is easily proved,
especially with regard to the last of them, the traces of which
are most conspicuous. In the northern regions it has left the
carcasses of some large quadrupeds which the ice had arrested,
and which are preserved even to the present day with their skin,
their hair, and their flesh. If they had not been frozen as soon
as killed, they must quickly have been decomposed by putrefac-
tion. But this eternal frost could not have taken possession of
the regions which these animals inhabited except by the same
cause which destroyed them; this cause therefore must have
been as sudden as its effect. The breaking to pieces and over-
turnings of the strata, which happened in former catastrophes,
show plainly enough that they were sudden and violent like the
last; and the heaps of débris and rounded pebbles which are
found in various places among the solid strata demonstrate the
vast force of the motions excited in the mass of waters by these
overturnings. Life, therefore, has been often disturbed on this
VII-267


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4258
CUVIER
earth by terrible events: calamities which, at their commence-
ment, have perhaps moved and overturned to a great depth the
entire outer crust of the globe, but which, since these first com-
motions, have uniformly acted at a less depth and less generally.
Numberless living beings have been the victims of these catas-
trophes; some have been destroyed by sudden inundations, others
have been laid dry in consequence of the bottom of the seas
being instantaneously elevated. Their races even have become
extinct, and have left no memorial of them except some small
fragment which the naturalist can scarcely recognize.
Such are the conclusions which necessarily result from the
objects that we meet with at every step of our inquiry, and which
we can always verify by examples drawn from almost every
country. Every part of the globe bears the impress of these
great and terrible events so distinctly, that they must be visible
to all who are qualified to read their history in the remains
which they have left behind.
But what is still more astonishing and not less certain, there
have not been always living creatures on the earth, and it is
easy for the observer to discover the period at which animal
productions began to be deposited.
As we ascend to higher points of elevation, and advance
towards the lofty summits of the mountains, the remains of
marine animals-that multitude of shells we have spoken of —
begin very soon to grow rare, and at length disappear altogether.
We arrive at strata of a different nature, which contain no ves-
tige at all of living creatures. Nevertheless their crystallization,
and even the nature of their strata, show that they also have
been formed in a fluid; their inclined position and their slopes
show that they also have been moved and overturned; the oblique
manner in which they sink under the shelly strata shows that
they have been formed before these; and the height to which
their bare and rugged tops are elevated above all the shelly
strata, shows that their summits have never again been covered
by the sea since they were raised up out of its bosom.
Such are those primitive or primordial mountains which trav-
erse our continents in various directions, rising above the clouds,
separating the basins of the rivers from one another, serving by
means of their eternal snows as reservoirs for feeding the springs,
and forming in some measure the skeleton, or as it were the
rough framework of the earth. The sharp peaks and rugged


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4259
indentations which mark their summits, and strike the eye at a
great distance, are so many proofs of the violent manner in
which they have been elevated. Their appearance in this respect
is very different from that of the rounded mountains and the
hills with flat surfaces, whose recently formed masses have
always remained in the situation in which they were quietly
deposited by the sea which last covered them.
These proofs become more obvious as we approach. The
valleys have no longer those gently sloping sides, or those alter-
nately salient and re-entrant angles opposite to one another,
which seem to indicate the beds of ancient streams. They
widen and contract without any general rule; their waters some-
times expand into lakes, and sometimes descend in torrents; and
here and there the rocks, suddenly approaching from each side,
form transverse dikes over which the waters fall in cataracts.
The shattered strata of these valleys expose their edges on one
side, and present on the other side large portions of their sur
face lying obliquely; they do not correspond in height, but those
which on one side form the summit of the declivity often dip
so deep on the other as to be altogether concealed.
Yet amidst all this confusion some naturalists have thought
that they perceived a certain degree of order prevailing, and that
among these immense beds of rocks, broken and overturned
though they be, a regular succession is observed, which is nearly
the same in all the different chains of mountains. According to
them, the granite, which surmounts every other rock, also dips
under every other rock; and is the most ancient of any that has
yet been discovered in the place assigned it by nature. The
central ridges of most of the mountain chains are composed of
it; slaty rocks, such as clay slate, granular quartz (grès), and
mica slate, rest upon its sides and form lateral chains; granular,
foliated limestone or marble, and other calcareous rocks that do
not contain shells, rest upon the slate, forming the exterior
ranges, and are the last formations by which this ancient un-
inhabited sea seems to have prepared itself for the production
of its beds of shells.
On all occasions, even in districts that lie at a distance from
the great mountain chains, where the more recent strata have
been digged through and the external covering of the earth
penetrated to a considerable depth, nearly the same order of
stratification has been found as that already described. The


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4260
CUVIER
crystallized marbles never cover the shelly strata; the granite in
mass never rests upon the crystallized marble, except in a few
places where it seems to have been formed of granites of newer
epochs. In one word, the foregoing arrangement appears to be
general, and must therefore depend upon general causes, which
have on all occasions exerted the same influence from one
extremity of the earth to the other.
Hence it is impossible to deny that the waters of the sea
have formerly, and for a long time, covered those masses of
matter which now constitute our highest mountains; and farther,
that these waters during a long time did not support any living
bodies. Thus it has not been only since the commencement of
animal life that these numerous changes and revolutions have
taken place in the constitution of the external covering of our
globe: for the masses formed previous to that event have suf-
fered changes, as well as those which have been formed since;
they have also suffered violent changes in their positions, and a
part of these assuredly took place while they existed alone, and
before they were covered over by the shelly masses.
The proof
of this lies in the overturnings, the disruptions, and the fissures
which are observable in their strata, as well as in those of
more recent formation, which are there even in greater number
and better defined.
But these primitive masses have also suffered other revolutions,
posterior to the formation of the secondary strata, and have per-
haps given rise to, or at least have partaken of, some portion of
the revolutions and changes which these latter strata have
experienced. There are actually considerable portions of the
primitive strata uncovered, although placed in lower situations
than many of the secondary strata; and we cannot conceive how
it should have so happened, unless the primitive strata in these
places had forced themselves into view after the formation of
those which are secondary. In some countries we find numerous
and prodigiously large blocks of primitive substances scattered
over the surface of the secondary strata, and separated by deep
valleys from the peaks or ridges whence these blocks must have
been derived. It is necessary, therefore, either that these blocks
must have been thrown into those situations by means of erup-
tions, or that the valleys, which otherwise must have stopped
their course, did not exist at the time of their being transported
to their present sites.


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4261
Thus we have a collection of facts, a series of epochs anterior
to the present time, and of which the successive steps may be
ascertained with perfect certainty, although the periods which
intervened cannot be determined with any degree of precision.
These epochs form so many fixed points, answering as rules for
directing our inquiries respecting this ancient chronology of the
earth.
OF THE FABULOUS ANIMALS OF THE ANCIENT WRITERS
PER
ERHAPS some persons may be disposed to employ an opposite
train of argument, and to allege that the ancients were not
only acquainted with as many large quadrupeds as we are,
as has been already shown, but that they actually described sev-
eral others which we do not now know; that we are rash in
considering the accounts of all such animals as fabulous; that
we ought to search for them with the utmost care, before con-
cluding that we have acquired a complete knowledge of the
existing animal creation; and in fine, that among those animals
which we presume to be fabulous we may perhaps discover,
when better acquainted with them, the actual originals of the
bones of those species which are now unknown. Perhaps some
may even conceive that the various monsters, essential ornaments
of the history of the heroic ages of almost every nation, are
precisely those very species which it was necessary to destroy
in order to allow the establishment of civilized societies. Thus
Theseus and Bellerophon must have been more fortunate than
all the nations of more modern days, who have only been able
to drive back the noxious animals into the deserts and ill-peopled
regions, but have never yet succeeded in exterminating a single
species.
It is easy to reply to the foregoing objections, by examining
the descriptions that are left us by the ancients of those unknown
animals, and by inquiring into their origins. Now the greater
number of those animals have an origin purely mythological, and
of this origin the descriptions given of them bear the most
unequivocal marks; as in almost all of them we see merely the
different parts of known animals united by an unbridled imagina-
tion, and in contradiction to every established law of nature.
Those which have been invented by the poetical fancy of the


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4262
CUVIER
Greeks have at least some grace and elegance in their composi-
tion, resembling the fantastic decorations which are still observ-
able on the ruins of some ancient buildings, and which have been
multiplied by the fertile genius of Raphael in his paintings.
Like these, they unite forms which please the eye by agreeable
contours and fanciful combinations, but which are utterly repug
nant to nature and reason; being merely the productions of
inventive and playful genius, or perhaps meant as emblematical
representations of metaphysical or moral propositions, veiled un-
der mystical hieroglyphics after the Oriental manner. Learned
men may be permitted to employ their time and ingenuity in
attempts to decipher the mystic knowledge concealed under the
forms of the Sphinx of Thebes, the Pegasus of Thessaly, the
Minotaur of Crete, or the Chimera of Epirus; but it would be
folly to expect seriously to find such monsters in nature. We
might as well endeavor to find the animals of Daniel, or the
beasts of the Apocalypse, in some hitherto unexplored recesses
of the globe. Neither can we look for the mythological animals
of the Persians,- creatures of a still bolder imagination, such
as the martichore, or destroyer of men, having a human head on
the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion; the griffin, or
guardian of hidden treasures, half eagle and half lion; or the
cartazonon, or wild ass, armed with a long horn on its forehead.
-
Ctesias, who reports these as actual living animals, has been
looked upon by some authors as an inventor of fables; whereas
he only attributes real existence to hieroglyphical representations.
These strange compositions of fancy have been seen in modern
times on the ruins of Persepolis. It is probable that their
hidden meanings may never be ascertained; but at all events we
are quite certain that they were never intended to be representa-
tions of real animals.
Agatharcides, another fabricator of animals, drew his informa-
tion in all probability from a similar source. The ancient
monuments of Egypt still furnish us with numerous fantastic
representations, in which the parts of different kinds of creatures
are strangely combined,-men with the heads of animals, and
animals with the heads of men,- which have given rise to cyno-
cephali, satyrs, and sphinxes. The custom of exhibiting in the
same sculpture, in bas-relief, men of very different heights,
of making kings and conquerors gigantic while their subjects
and vassals are represented as only a fourth or fifth part of their


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4263
size, must have given rise to the fable of the pigmies. In some
corner of these monuments Agatharcides must have discovered
his carnivorous bull, whose mouth, extending from ear to ear,
devoured every other animal that came in his way. But scarcely
any naturalist will acknowledge the existence of any such animal,
since nature has never joined cloven hoofs and horns with teeth
adapted for cutting and devouring animal food.
There may have been other figures equally strange with
these, either among those monuments of Egypt which have not
been able to resist the ravages of time, or in the ancient tem-
ples of Ethiopia and Arabia which have been destroyed by the
religious zeal of the Abyssinians and Mahometans. The monu-
ments of India teem with such figures; but the combinations in
these are so ridiculously extravagant that they have never im-
posed even upon the most credulous. Monsters with a hundred
arms and twenty heads of different kinds are far too absurd to
be believed.
Nay, the inhabitants of China and Japan have their imagin-
ary animals, which they represent as real, and that too in their
religious books. The Mexicans had them. In short, they are to
be found among every people whose idolatry has not yet
acquired some degree of refinement. But is there any one who
could possibly pretend to discover, amidst the realities of animal
nature, what are thus so plainly the productions of ignorance
and superstition? And yet some travelers, influenced by a
desire to make themselves famous, have gone so far as to pre-
tend that they saw these fancied beings; or, deceived by a
slight resemblance into which they were too careless to inquire,
they have identified these with creatures that actually exist. In
their eyes, large baboons or monkeys have become cynocephali,
and sphinxes real men with long tails. It is thus that St.
Augustine imagined he had seen a satyr.
Real animals, observed and described with equal inaccuracy,
may have given rise to some of these ideal monsters.
Thus we
can have no doubt of the existence of the hyena, though the back
of this animal is not supported by a single bone, and though
it does not change its sex yearly, as alleged by Pliny. Perhaps
the carnivorous bull may only have been the two-horned rhi-
noceros falsely described. M. de Weltheim considers the aurifer-
ous ants of Herodotus as the corsacs of modern naturalists.


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4264
CUVIER
The most famous among these fabulous animals of the an-
cients was the unicorn. Its real existence has been obstinately
asserted even in the present day, or at least proofs of its exist-
ence have been eagerly sought for. Three several animals are
frequently mentioned by the ancients as having only one horn
placed on the middle of the forehead. The oryx of Africa, hav-
ing cloven hoofs, the hair placed reversely to that of other
animals, its height equal to that of the bull, or even of the
rhinoceros, and said to resemble deer and goats in its form; the
Indian ass, having solid hoofs; and the monoceros, properly so
called, whose feet are sometimes compared to those of the lion
and sometimes to those of the elephant, and is therefore con-
sidered as having divided feet. The horse unicorn and the bull
unicorn are doubtless both referable to the Indian ass, for even
the latter is described as having solid hoofs. We may therefore
be fully assured that these animals have never really existed, as
no solitary horns have ever found their way into our collections,
excepting those of the rhinoceros and narwhal.
After careful consideration, it is impossible that we should
give any credit to rude sketches made by savages upon rocks.
Entirely ignorant of perspective, and wishing to represent the
outlines of a straight-horned antelope in profile, they could only
give the figure one horn, and thus they produced an oryx. The
oryxes that are seen on the Egyptian monuments, likewise, are
probably nothing more than productions of the stiff style im-
posed on the sculptors of the country by religious prejudices.
Several of their profiles of quadrupeds show only one fore and
one hinder leg; and it is probable that the same rule led them
also to represent only one horn. Perhaps their figures may have
been copied after individuals that had lost one of their horns by
accident, a circumstance that often happens to the chamois and
the saiga, species of the antelope genus; and this would be quite.
sufficient to establish the error. All the ancients, however, have
not represented the oryx as having only one horn. Oppian
expressly attributes two to this animal, and Ælian mentions one
that had four. Finally, if this animal was ruminant and cloven-
footed, we are quite certain that its frontal bone must have
been divided longitudinally into two, and that it could not pos-
sibly, as it is very justly remarked by Camper, have had a horn
placed upon the suture.


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4265
It may be asked, however: What two-horned animals could
have given an idea of the oryx in the forms in which it has
been transmitted down to us, even independent of the notion
of a single horn? To this I answer, as already done by Pallas,
that it was the straight-horned antelope oryx of Gmelin, improp-
erly named pasan by Buffon. This animal inhabits the deserts
of Africa, and must frequently approach the confines of Egypt,
and appears to be that which is represented in the hieroglyphics.
It equals the ox in height, while the shape of its body approaches
to that of a stag, and its straight horns present exceedingly
formidable weapons, hard almost as iron, and sharp-pointed like
javelins. Its hair is whitish; it has black spots and streaks on
its face, and the hair on its back points forward. Such is the
description given by naturalists; and the fables of the Egyptian
priests, which have occasioned the insertion of its figure among
their hieroglyphics, do not require to have been founded in
nature. Supposing that an individual of this species may have
been seen which had lost one of its horns by some accident, it
may have been taken as a representative of the entire race, and
erroneously adopted by Aristotle to be copied by all his succes-
sors. All this is quite possible and even natural, and gives not
the smallest evidence for the existence of a single-horned species
of antelope.
In regard to the Indian ass, of the alexipharmic virtues of
whose horn the ancients speak, we find the Eastern nations of
the present day attributing exactly the same property of counter-
acting poison to the horn of the rhinoceros. When this horn
was first imported into Greece, nothing probably was known
respecting the animal to which it belonged; and accordingly it
was not known to Aristotle. Agatharcides is the first author by
whom it is mentioned. In the same manner, ivory was known
to the ancients long before the animal from which it is pro-
cured; and perhaps some of their travelers may have given to
the rhinoceros the name of Indian ass, with as much propriety
as the Romans denominated the elephant the bull of Lucania.
Everything which they relate of the strength, size, and ferocity
of their wild ass of India corresponds sufficiently with the rhi-
noceros. In succeeding times, when the rhinoceros came to be
better known to naturalists, finding that former authors men-
tioned a single-horned animal under the name of Indian ass,
they concluded without any examination that it must be quite


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4266
CUVIER
a distinct creature, having solid hoofs. We have remaining a
detailed description of the Indian ass, written by Ctesias; but
as we have already seen that this must have been taken from
the ruins of Persepolis, it should go for nothing in the real
history of the animal.
When there afterwards appeared more exact descriptions of
an animal having several toes or hoofs on each foot, the ancients
conceived it to be a third species of one-horned animals, to which
they gave the name of monoceros. These double and even triple
references are most frequent among ancient writers, because most
of their works which have come down to us were mere compila-
tions; because even Aristotle himself has often mixed borrowed
facts with those which had come under his own observation; and
because the habit of critically investigating the authorities of
previous writers was as little known among ancient naturalists
as among their historians.
From all these reasonings and digressions, it may be fairly
concluded that the large animals of the ancient continent with
which we are now acquainted were known to the ancients; and
that all the animals of which the ancients have left descriptions,
and which are now unknown, were merely fabulous. It also fol-
lows that the large animals of the three anciently known quarters
of the world were very soon known to the people who frequented
their coasts.
It may also be concluded that no large species remains to be
discovered in America, as there is no good reason that can be
assigned why any such should exist in that country with which
we are unacquainted; and in fact none has been discovered there
during the last hundred and fifty years.
From all these considerations it may be safely concluded, as
shall be more minutely explained in the sequel,- that none of
the large species of quadrupeds, whose remains are now found
imbedded in regular rocky strata, are at all similar to any of the
known living species; that this circumstance is by no means
the mere effect of chance, or because the species to which these
fossil bones have belonged are still concealed in the desert and
uninhabited parts of the world, and have hitherto escaped the
observation of travelers, but-that this astonishing phenomenon
has proceeded from general causes, and that the careful investi-
gation of it affords one of the best means for discovering and
explaining the nature of these causes.
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