That principle is the life and soul of his system.
FOOTNOTE:
[34] _The Materialism of the Present Day: a Critique of Dr. Buechner's
System_. By Paul Janet, 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.
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