Pattern and Progress on the Geological Stage 489
which, since these first commotions, have uniformly acted at a less depth
[sic] and less generally. Numberless living beings have been the victims of
these catastrophes; 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 (1818, p. 38).The last line of this quotation helps to explain the longest and most brilliant
(though ultimately incorrect) final section of the Essay—the source of so much
misunderstanding about Cuvier, and about catastrophism. Given the fragmentary
nature of geological evidence, and the tendency for such evidence to become more
and more inadequate as we penetrate deeper into time, our best empirical hope for
understanding catastrophes lies in a detailed study of the most recent event. By
coordinating two sources of evidence— natural history for estimating the effect of
ordinary causes since the last paroxysm, and civil history (because the last
catastrophe occurred within human memory)—we might characterize at least one
event well enough to build a model for the generality. Cuvier therefore scans the
oldest records of all cultures, rejecting some as fabulous, adjusting and
coordinating others, and finally reaching the conclusion that "the crust of our globe
has been subjected to a great and sudden revolution, the epoch of which cannot be
dated much farther back than five or six thousand years ago" (1818, p. 166). Since
Western culture recorded this event as Noah's flood, and since Cuvier used the
Bible as one source of information about this episode, posterity has interpreted this
section of the Essay as a tortured exercise in Christian apologetics—thus affirming
the usual interpretation of catastrophism as theological reaction.
But Cuvier proceeds with a precisely opposite intent, and his Essay therefore
becomes a seminal work of Enlightenment humanism. Cuvier does not marshall
geological and civil history to support the biblical account of Noah's flood; rather,
he uses the Old Testament as one source among many in a broad effort to unite the
traditions of disparate fields towards a common intellectual goal. Of course Cuvier
cites the Bible—as one legitimate source for making historical inferences, but with
no favored status. Cuvier pays as much attention to the traditions of the Assyrians,
the Parsis and the Hindus, and he grants even more credence to the records of
ancient China. His evidence for the last catastrophe does not rest upon scriptural
assertion, but on a supposed confluence of differing empirical sources, as the
lengthy title for this chapter of the Essay proclaims: "The concurrence of historical
and traditionary testimonies, respecting a comparatively recent renewal of the
human race, and their agreement with the proofs that are furnished by the
operations of nature."
Cuvier's Essay also stresses the methodology of catastrophism, particularly
the empirical literalism of its favored approach to the geological record. Cuvier,
even more strongly than Lyell, dismisses the speculative tradition pursued by
previous generations, with their grandiloquent claims for comprehensive