The Language of Natural Power: The “Eloges” of Georges Cuvier and the Public Language of Nineteenth Century Science

Here I should acknowledge my indebtedness to McCormack S. G. , “Latin prose panegyrics”, Revue des études augustiniennes, xxii (1976), 29–77; and Brown P. R. L. , The making of Late Antiquity (to appear, Harvard University Press).

For Cuvier's own Hobbesian views, which contained an implicit attack on the idea of a beneficent divine order reflected in the human and the natural world, see Eloges, i, 91–92: “… nous retrouvons parmi eux [the animals] le même spectacle que dans le monde; quoi qu'en aient dit nos moralistes, ils ne sont guère moins méchants ni guère moins malheureux que nous; l'arrogance des forts, la bassesse des faibles, la vile rapacité, de courts plaisirs achetés par de grands efforts, la mort amenée par de longues douleurs, voilà ce qui regne chez les animaux comme parmi les hommes.” For the part played by Cuvier in establishing the autonomy of the natural world, see Foucault M. , Les mots et les choses (Paris, 1966), 275–92.

The problem of translation was intensified by the existence in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of two different styles of response to the encounter with the natural world. The aesthetic of the sublime endorsed the primacy of an individual, untranslatable encounter with nature. On the other hand, ideals of rationality and public utility as justifications for the pursuit of natural philosophy, are more readily acceptable in public statements of the rationale of science, and are accordingly stressed in the éloges. For another example of contemporary attempts to reconcile these two strands of thought, see the description of Humphry Davy in Knight D. M. , “The scientist as sage”, Studies in Romanticism, vi (1967), 65–88.

Before Cuvier's arrival in Paris in 1795, he had taken a keen interest in the collection of data on the lives of eminent contemporary natural philosophers. In 1795, he joined the Société Philomatique in Paris, and produced several funeral éloges on its members. It is difficult to say whether this was an important factor in his appointment in 1803 as one of the Perpetual Secretaries of the Institut; however, it is certain that his duties in that post involved the composition of a publicly read obituary notice on all those of his colleagues who had died in the preceding half-year. After his election in August 1818 to membership of the Académie Française, he performed similar duties for that body. Thus Cuvier became the main agent of biographical evaluation, not only for the two major bodies of official French culture, but also for one of the most important Parisian private scientific societies. He also reached a wider audience, for between 1811 and 1828, he contributed fortytwo articles on men of science to the first edition of the Biographie universelle. The éloges also achieved a wide diffusion. They automatically appeared in the official organ of the Institut, the Mémoirs, and could also be reprinted in the intellectual journals such as the Magasin encyclopédique, Between 1819 and 1827 Cuvier published a collected edition of the éloges in three volumes. They were reprinted twice in the 1860s under the editorship of Cuvier's protégé Pierre Flourens. They appeared in edifying selections for children as late as 1911, and are still used in French schools as stylistic models. In the nineteenth century, individual éloges were frequently used as introductions to works of popular natural history, or to scientific biography. Robert Jameson's translation of fifteen éloges in the New Edinburgh review between 1821 and 1831 played an important part in their diffusion in England. Lee's Sarah standard Memoirs of Baron Cuvier (London, 1833), devotes nearly a hundred pages to précis and paraphase of the éloges. The publication history of the collected editions and of individual éloges is traced in the bibliographical section of this paper.

For examples of such attempts, see Sonntag O. , “The motivations of the scientist: The self-image of Albrecht von Haller”, Isis, lxv (1974), 336–51; Delorme S. , “Des éloges de Fontenelle et de la psychologie des savants”, Mélanges G. Jamati (Paris, 1956).

See Outram D. , “Scientific biography and the case of Georges Cuvier”, History of science, xiv (1976), 101–37.

See Foucault M. , Naissance de la clinique (Paris, 1963), 107–8. Hence the ease with which modern indoor laboratory science has often been identified in popular writings with ‘bad’ or ‘dirty’ science.

Eloges, ii, 311 (Werner); iii, 95 (Duhamel).

For other specific examples of the connection between pastoral and the tension between otium and negotium, retreat and the world, contemplation and involvement, see Matthews J. , Western aristocracies and Imperial Court, AD 364–425 (Oxford, 1975), 9–12; Sullivan M. , The birth of landscape painting in China (London, 1962), 1–24; S. G. McCormack, op. cit. (ref. 1).

Eloges, ii, 269 (Tenon).

Eloges, ii, 380 (Riche).

Eloges, ii, 6 (Fourcroy). Here the question of Fourcroy's involvement in Lavoisier's execution also undoubtedly cast a shadow.

This is a modification of the classic Stoic position of the retreat into otium and pastoral mediocrity as a response to oppressive government, and as a means of gaining the calm of spirit necessary to reflect upon that government. Unlike the Stoic, who used his calm contemplation to organize his perception of unjust government, Cuvier's natural philosopher exists in a world whose rural, pastoral elements isolate him completely from the problems of personal response to political problems. This emphasis on the inviolability of the Stoic is also present in Rousseau's reworking of classic Stoic themes. See Roche K. F. , Rousseau: Stoic and romantic (London, 1974). It also renders impossible any recourse to references to a Cincinnatus-style passage from pastoral life to the exercise of ‘clean’ political power.

Eloges, i, 83.

Académie des Sciences, Mémoires (Histoire), x (1831), 204.

Eloges, i, 254.

Eloges, i, 169.

For the preoccupation of the medical community with similar problems of translation posed by the ‘interrogation’ of nature, see Foucault M. , op. cit. (ref. 7).

The notorious reputation of Cuvier's éloge of Lamarck should not obscure the fact that if anything it is his appreciation of Adanson which is the more critical. Images of Cuvier and Lamarck have been made to interact in the historiography in ways which imply an expectation of conflict between them, and which have become entwined with a highly emotive debate on the origins of the theory of evolution. Cuvier's relations with Adanson, on the other hand, have never received the systematic analysis demanded by Cuvier's own acknowledgment in this éloge of his own debt to Adanson's theory of classification. The éloge was originally published in Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences, xiii (1835) and the passages quoted are on pp. 1–11; that from the éloge of Adanson at Eloges, i, 304. For another example of the historiographical linkage between solitude and the ‘martyr to science’, see Beddall B. G. , “‘Un naturalista original’: Don Félix de Azara, 1746–1821”, Journal of the history of biology, viii (1975), 15–66.

Marchant L. (trans.), Georges Cuvier: Lettres à C. H. Pfaff sur l'histoire natuselle, la politique et la littérature, 1788–1792 (Paris, 1858), 33. Juxta-position brings out sharply in this passage the two senses of power, one referring to ‘clean’ power and the other to ‘dirty’ power. It is unclear who Cuvier had in mind as the “new Sejanus”: It is difficult to assimilate the powerful but low-born favourite of the Emperor Tiberius entirely with any of the obvious candidates such as Cambacérès, Chaptal or Lucien Bonaparte.

Gillispie C. C. , “The Encyclopédie and the Jacobin philosophy of science”, Critical problems in the history of science, ed. Clagett M. (Madison, 1962), 255–89. See also Sennett R. , The fall of public man (Cambridge, 1977) for a discussion of nineteenth century difficulties in the location of ‘authentic’, ‘natural’ response in the public arena.

Eloges, i, 85.

Cf. Diamond S. , The reputation of the American business man (Cambridge, Mass., 1955), 181, for a similar utilization of the conventions of obituary notices on individuals to prohibit criticism of the nature of areas of activity as such—in this case that of the operation of the American economic system.

Eloges, i, 305.

Diekmann H. , “Diderot's idea of genius”, Journal of the history of ideas, ii (1941), 151–82.

Most of the historiography of Cuvier himself centres on this debate between the possibility of a pure, ‘naive’ vision of nature which emphasizes the collection of ‘facts’, and the more intuitive view, which laid great stress on conceptualization before the ‘facts’ were collected. See Foucault M. , op. cit. (ref. 7). It is against this background that ‘Baconian’ research programmes in the natural sciences in this period should be assessed.

de la Ronde d'Alembert Jean , “Essai sur la société des gens de lettres et des grands, sur la réputation, sur les Mécènes, et sur les récompenses littéraires”, Oeuvres completes (Paris, 1790), vi, 335–73.

For another example of a highly evolved common language maintained by a small-scale élite, see McCormack S. G. , op. cit. (ref. 1), 53: Orators and panegyrists in fourth century Gaul “spoke by allusion, implication and symbol”.

Cf. Diamond S. , op. cit. (ref. 23), 177, for the use of idealized figures “as a focus around which consensus may be attained, and as a stimulus for the voluntary acceptance of the discipline implied in the behaviour he symbolizes”. Cuvier rarely if ever uses the term ‘genius’, and seems to draw little upon the tradition originating in Vasari, and continued through Diderot, of the genius as an individual of exceptional emotional force, thereby often posing danger to others. Genius-as-abstraction similarly plays little part in his view of the natural philosopher. See Wittkower R. Wittkower M. , Born under Saturn (London, 1963), for the general history of this myth of genius in the artist especially. For Cuvier, the natural philosopher is above all an interpreter, one whose vision interrogates nature and unveils her secrets. For his rejection of contemporary Chateaubriand-inspired ideas of the wild-eyed poet as the true interpreter of nature, see his article in Le moniteur, 3 novembre 1807, p. 1186. Here, Cuvier set out his own more restrained and classic view of the community of natural philosophers, who “mettent leur gloire à dévoiler quelque partie des secrets de la nature; comme ils sont calmes dans ce sentiment intime qu'avec du travail ils ajouteront toujours quelquechose à cet édifice imposant de la science que les siècles élevent; dont toute l'humanité profite et dont rien n'ébranle la partie une fois fondée sur les faits. Ils sentent qu'ils n'ont des juges que leurs pairs répandus dans tout ce monde civilisé et qu'aucun prestige ne pourrait ni éblouir ni gagner. Ils ne s'exposent donc ni à être trompés eux-mêmes par des applaudissements aveugles ni à faire des démarches honteuses pour s'en procurer de factices”.