Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/645

 sciences. Europe of To-day 607 In geology we have the verification and results of Newton's theory, the exact form of the earth, the laws of the tides, the primitive fluidity of the planet, the aqueous and igne- ous origin of rocks, the structure of the beds of fossils, the repeated and prolonged submersion of continents, the slow growth of animal and vegetable deposits, the vast antiquity of life, the gradual transformation of the earth's surface, and, finally, the grand picture in which Buffon describes approximately the entire history of our globe from the time it formed a mass of glowing lava down to the time when our own species, after so many lost or sur- viving ones, was able to inhabit it. Upon this science of inorganic matter we see arising at Organic the same time the science of lorganic matter. Linnaeus in- vents botanical nomenclature and the first satisfactory clas- sifications of plants. Digestion is explained by Re'aumur and Spallanzani, respiration by Lavoisier. Scientists pene- trate to the lowest stages of animal life. Lyonnet devotes twenty years to portraying a species of caterpillar. Need- ham reveals his infusoria. Buffon, and above all Lamarck, in their great but incomplete sketches, outline with pene- trating divination the leading features of modern physi- ology and zoology. Organic molecules everywhere diffused, which multiply and combine with one another through blind and spontaneous development, without either foreign direction or any preconceived end, solely through the effects of their structure and surroundings, unite together and form those masterly organisms which we call plants and animals. In the beginning we have the simplest forms, followed by slowly developing, complex, and perfected organisms, — all indicated, by conjecture and approxima- tion, the cellular theory of later physiologists and the con- clusions of Darwin. In the picture of nature which the human mind now portrays, the science of the eighteenth century has drawn the general outline, and indicated the perspective and the general masses so correctly that at the present day all its main features remain intact. Except a few partial changes, there is nothing to efface.