Seeds of Hierarchy 171
our view. Cuvier did far more damage. I don't know what lip service Cuvier gave
to the ancient maxim de mortuis nil nisi bonum (say only good of the dead), but he
violated this precept with avidity in writing eloges (eulogies) of deceased
colleagues. Cuvier, the consummate politician, understood the power thus granted
to shape history in his own favor. For what forum could be less subject to rebuttal,
and therefore more suited for easy passage into received truth. As master of eloges,
Cuvier held enormous power over his colleagues, as long as he could outlive them!
(see pp. 309-312 on Geoffroy's revenge for the same reason). His official eloge of
Lamarck is a masterful, if repugnant, document of propaganda directed against a
close colleague and former friend who had (in Cuvier's view) gone beyond the pale
in both methodology of research and content of belief. Cuvier used his eloge as an
opportunity to castigate Lamarck, and thus provide a lesson in proper procedure for
aspiring scientists.
Cuvier began with cloying praise, and then portrayed his need to criticize as a
sad duty: "In sketching the life of one of our most celebrated naturalists, we have
conceived it to be our duty, while bestowing the commendation they deserve on
the great and useful works which science owes to him, likewise to give prominence
to such of his productions in which too great indulgence of a lively imagination
had led to results of a more questionable kind, and to indicate, as far as we can, the
cause or, if it may be so expressed, the genealogy of his deviations" (1832, 1984
edition, p. 435).
Cuvier then dismembered Lamarck on two grounds. First, with justice in the
claim (however unkind the rhetoric), he castigated Lamarck for reaching too far
without foundation, and for building all-encompassing systems in the speculative
mode. (This criticism reflected Cuvier's main unhappiness with Lamarck's science.
Cuvier viewed himself as a modernist, committed to rigorous empirical
documentation, and no extension beyond direct evidence in the search for
explanations—as opposed to Lamarck's unfruitful, comprehensive speculation in
the antiquated esprit de systeme, or spirit of system): "He had meditated on the
general laws of physics and chemistry, on the phenomena of the atmosphere, on
those of living bodies, and on the origin of the globe and its revolutions.
Psychology, and the higher branches of metaphysics, were not beyond the range of
his contemplations; and on all these subjects he had formed a number of definite
ideas... calculated to place every branch of knowledge on a new foundation"
(1832, 1984 edition, p. 442).
Cuvier acknowledged Lamarck's excellent efforts in morphology and
taxonomy, but then damned him for denigrating this admirable work as a trifle
compared with all-embracing and useless theories. What a sorry spectacle:
Lamarck in his armchair, challenging the great Lavoisier, the icon and martyr of
true science. (Lavoisier was beheaded during the Reign of Terror.) "So intimately
did he identify himself with his systems, and such was his desire that they should
be propagated, that all other objects seemed to him subordinate, and even his
greatest and most useful works appeared in his own eyes merely as the slight
accessories of lofty speculations. Thus, while Lavoisier was creating in his
laboratory a new chemistry, founded on a beautiful and methodical