et, Member of the Institute of France, Professor of
Philosophy at the Paris Faculte des Lettres. Translated from the French,
by Gustave Masson, B. A. London and Paris, 1867.

_M. Flourens._

M. Flourens, recently dead, was one of the earliest and most pronounced
opponents of Darwinism. He published in 1864 his "Examen du Livre de M.
Darwin sur l'Origine des Especes." His position as Member of the
Academie Francaise, and Perpetual Secretary of the Academie des
Sciences, or Institut de France, vouch for his high rank among the
French naturalists. His connection with the Jardin des Plantes gave him
enlarged opportunities for biological experiments. The result of his own
experience, as well as the experience of other observers, was, as he
expresses it, his solemn conviction that species are fixed and not
transmutable. No ingenuity of device could render hybrids fertile. "They
never establish an intermediate species." It is, therefore, to the
doctrine of evolution his attention is principally directed.
Nevertheless, he is no less struck by Darwin's way of excluding all
intelligence and design in his manner of speaking of nature. On this
point he quotes the language of Cuvier, who says: "Nature has been
personified. Living beings have been called the works of nature. The
general bearing of these creatures to each other has become the laws of
nature. It is thus while considering Nature as a being endowed with
intelligence and will, but in its power limited and secondary, that it
may be said that she watches incessantly over the maintenance of her
work; that she does nothing in vain, and always acts by the most simple
means.... It is easy to see how puerile are those who give nature a
species of individual existence distinct from the Creator, and from the
law which He has impressed upon the movements and peculiarities of the
forms given by Him to living things, and which He makes to act upon
their bodies with a peculiar force and reason." Older writers, says
Flourens, in speaking of Nature, "gave to her inclinations, intentions,
and views, and horrors (of a vacuum), and sports," etc. He says that one
of the principal objects of his book is to show how Mr. Darwin "has
deluded himself, and perhaps others, by a constant abuse of figurative
language." "He plays with Nature as he pleases, and makes her do
whatsoever he wishes." When we remember that Mr. Darwin defines Nature
to be the aggregate of physical forces, we see how, in