[7] Lavoisier perished at the guillotine in 1794, and his death was a tragic loss to science.
[8] Cuvier’s _Anatomie comparée_ appeared in the years 1800-1805, following his _Histoire naturelle_ (1798-1799). Later came his _Rapport sur les Sciences naturelles_ (1810) and his work _Le Regne animal_ (1816).He died in 1832. We may note that Cuvier opposed the speculative evolutionary doctrines of Lamarck, with whom he indulged in controversy.
[9] In his work, _Philosophie zoologique, ou Exposition des Considérations relatives a l’Histoire naturelle des Animaux_, 2 vols Paris, Dentu, 1809.
[10] His _Social Statics_ was published in 1850, and his _Psychology_ five years later. His life work, _The Synthetic Philosophy_, extends over the period 1860-1896.
One of the foremost scientific minds, however, was Claude Bernard (1813-1878), a friend of Renan, who held the Chair of Medicine at the College de France, and was, in addition, the Professor of Physiology at the Faculté des Sciences at the Sorbonne. Science, Bernard maintained, concerns itself only with phenomena and their laws. He endeavoured in his celebrated _Introduction à l’Etude de la Médécine expérimentale_, published in 1865, to establish the science of physiology upon a sound basis, having respect only to fact, not owning homage to theories of a metaphysical character or to the authority of persons or creeds. He desired to obtain by such a rigorous and precise method, objectivity. “The experimental method is,” he insists, “the really scientific method, which proclaims the freedom of the human spirit and its intelligence. It not only shakes off the yoke of metaphysics and of theology, in addition it refuses to admit personal considerations and subjective standpoints.”[11]
[11] _Introduction à l’Etude de la Médécine expérimentale_, chap. ii, sect. 4.
Bernard’s attitude is distinctly that of a positivist, and the general tone of his remarks as well as his attitude on many special points agrees with that of Comte. His conclusions regarding physiology are akin to those expressed by Comte concerning biology. Bernard excludes any metaphysical hypothesis such as the operation of a vital principle, and adheres strictly to physicochemical formulas. He accepts, however, Comte’s warning about the reduction of the higher to terms of the lower, or, in Spencerian phraseology, the explanation of the more complex by the less complex. Consequently, he carefully avoids the statement that he desires to “reduce” physiology to physics and chemistry. He makes no facile and light-hearted transition as did Spencer; on the contrary, he claims that the living has some specific quality which cannot be “reduced” to other terms, and which cannot be summed up in the formulae of physics or chemistry. The physiologist and the medical practitioner must never overlook the fact that every living being forms an organism and an individuality. The physiologist, continues Bernard, must take notice of this unity or harmony of the whole, even while he penetrates the interior to know the mechanism of each of its parts. The physicist and the chemist can ignore any notion of final causes in the facts they observe, but the physiologist must admit a harmonious finality, a harmony pre-established in the organism, whose actions form and express a unity and solidarity, since they generate one another. Life itself is _creation_; it is not capable of expression merely in physico-chemical formulae. The creative character, which is its essence, never can be so expressed. Bernard postulated an abstract, _idée directrice et créatrice_, presiding over the evolution of an organism. “_Dans tout germe vivant, il y a une idée créatrice qui se développe et se manifeste par l’organisation. Pendant toute sa durée l’être vivant reste sous l’influence de cette même force vitale, créatrice, et la mort arrive lorsqu’elle ne peut plus se réaliser. Ici comme partout, tout dérive de l’idée, qui, seule, crée et dirige_.”[12]