The Initial Reactions of French Biologists to

Darwin's Origin of Species

JOHN FARLEY

Biology Department, Dalhousie University

Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

INTRODUCTION

One of the most interesting aspects of nineteenth century science is

the very marked differences that existed between British, French, and
German scientists. The differences are very clearly manifested in the
various responses to Darwin's Origin o f Species and are particularly
marked when one compares the French scientists with the Germans.
The Germans accepted Darwin with almost as much enthusiasm as the
French rejected him. The purpose of this paper is to examine the
factors when led the biologists of France to reject Darwin during the
crucial early years and to point out the very different situation that
existed in the German states.
The most obvious characteristic of the French reaction was that
French scientists attacked the Darwinian theory of evolution by using
the very same arguments they had employed in reacting to Lamarck
thirty years previously. In discussing Darwin they referred to the early
nineteenth century arguments over "the unity of type" and the four
Cuvierian "'embrachements, '" the ontogenetic concept of "l'~volution,"
and the fundamental distinction between species and varieties. In many
ways the Darwinian debate was a reenactment of the Cuvier-Lamarck
debate of earlier years.
These arguments show that the basic structure of French biology had
not changed since the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was still
theoscientific in nature and could still accept explanations which incor-
porated ideas of design and development of life forms to a final cause.
The purpose of French biology was not simply to discuss material
things, but to gain insights into general truths which substantiated
French beliefs that God played a fundamental role in the natural
world as well as in human society. In addition, the mid-nineteenth
century stress on empiricism reinforced this outlook since its foremost
proponent, Cuvier, obviously utilized empiricism in his castigation of
the speculative Lamarck.
These concepts were foreign to the mid-nineteenth century German

Journal of the History of Biology, vol. 7, no. 2 (Fall 1974), pp. 275-300.
Copyright© 1974 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland.
JOHN FARLEY

biologists. To the Germans, concepts of the unity of type, ontogenetic

development, and final causes conjured up ideas of the old Naturphilo-
sophie rather than the teachings of a great empiricist like Cuvier.
Furthermore, it was the reaction against this Naturphilosophie which
had spawned the reductionist movement of the 1830's and 1840's. It
was members of this school who had rejected all metaphysical explana-
tions from science and replaced them by a creed of physicalism, into
which Darwin was seen to fit beautifully. This creed was summed up by
Emil du Bois Reymond when he remarked that "there is no other
knowledge than mechanical knowledge, however miserable a substitute
that may be for genuine knowledge."1 Members of this school generally
accepted both the theory of evolution and the mechanism of natural
selection, since the former was seen to imply the union of the organic
world with the inorganic and the latter to be a purely mechanistic
device. 2
The reaction of German and French biologists to Darwin is indicative
of a fundamental difference between the nature of biology in the two
countries, a difference which led them to hold widely divergent views as
to what could be accepted as a valid scientific explanation. The im-
portant question to be asked is why the French retained a biology
which in many ways reflected older concepts drawn from romanticism.
Clearly the fact that it was seen to have a strong empirical base was of
utmost importance, but in the 1860's it was reinforced by two other
very important factors. The first was the curious age-distribution
pattern of French biologists, the second was the particular political-
theological and social situation in the Second Empire. The combination
of these three factors presented insurmountable odds for a theory such
as Darwin's, the acceptance of which demanded a change in the very
nature of biology itself.
In this paper I shall discuss first the debate which centered on
Darwin, showing how much it involved concepts drawn from earlier

1. Emil Du Bois Reymond, "Darwin versus Galiani (1876)" in Reden yon Du

Bois Reymond (Leipzig, 1886), I, 232.
2. For details of German reaction against Naturphilosophie, see E. Mendelsohn,
"Physical. Models and Physiological Concepts: Explanations in 19th Century Bio-
logy", Brit. J. Hist. Sci., 2 (1965), 203-219. Some details of the German reaction
to Darwin are given in J. Farley, "The Spontaneous Generation Controversy
(1859-1880): British and German Reactions to the Problem of Abiogenesis",Z
Hist. Biol., 5 no. 2 (Fall 1972), 285-319. Darwin in Germany has also been
discussed in P. C. Mullen, The Preconditions and Reception of Darwinian Bilogy
in Germany, 1800-1870, unpub, diss., University of California, 1969; issued by
University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, ~54-9058.

276
The Initial Reactions of French Biologists to Darwin's Origin of Species

years of the nineteenth century. Then I shall discuss the factors which
led French biologists to retain these concepts and thus to reject
Darwinism.

THE DARWINIAN DEBATE: retention of the old outlook

The essentially descriptive and classificatory nature of eighteenth

century biology had led to an attempt at synthesis, an attempt to
understand the laws behind the totality of the organic world. This
discipline, morphology, attempted to explain the similarities and
differences in the form of natural objects, and the tool developed by
Cuvier was that of comparative morphology. It was through his brilliant
empirical work that the concept of the Great Chain of Being, reflecting
a unity of type, was replaced by the concept of the four embranche-
ments. This had a great impact on another aspect of the Great Chain of
Being, namely, the concept of l'~volution.
L~volution was initially an embryological concept used to describe a
process of development which differed from epigenesis. In the early
years of the eighteenth century, the concept of development was one of
a physical preformation in which the adult was thought to have a real
entity within the egg or sperm. With improvements in microscopic
technique and the gradual acceptance of epigenesis, this gave ground to
the doctrine of l'~volution, in which the egg, since it evolved into a
predetermined final form, must contain within itself the plan or
thought which determines the direction and end of the ensuing develop-
ment. 3 This concept was later amalgamated into the Great Chain of
Being, whereby the initially static concept came to be seen as a
"program of nature which is being carried out gradually and exceed-
ingly slowly in the cosmic history. ''4 "L~volution is the regular and
predetermined ascension of beings with the purpose of reaching a
superior type; it is the progressive ascension of animality towards
humanity; it is the pre-existing law of the living world. ''s The predeter-

3. "La totalit6 de la forme terminale se trouvait d6termin6e pax la totalit~ de la

forme initiale"; see Georges Canguilhem, "Du developpement ~ l%volution au
XIXe Si~cle", Thales, 11 (1960).
4. A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1953), chap. 9.
5. E. Chauffard, "De la finalit~ darts les ~tres vivants et de la doctrine de l'~volu-
tion (1877)", in La vie, dtudes et problOmes de biologie gdndrale (Paris, 1878),
p. 391.

277
JOHN FARLEY

mined direction naturally implied a predetermined plan or thought

which had guided this ~volution of life, namely, the infinite, eternal,
final cause, God. It was this concept o f becoming that was at the root
o f Naturphilosophie. 6
The victory o f Cuvier and the demise of the unity of type concept,
did not destroy the doctrine of l'~volution. Rather it came to be viewed
in the context o f the four e m b r a n c h e m e n t s , each of which was thought
to have independently "evolved" and developed through the ages. In
other words, God had created four plans which had each become slowly
manifested over time. Included in all these debates was the continuing
and unresolved problem of the species concept. Was it purely an
arbitrary subjective concept or did it correspond to objective reality? If
it did correspond to reality, what was the nature of a species and how
could one define it? What was the relationship between races, varieties,
and species?
These debates had dominated Frech biology in the early decades of
the nineteenth century, when French biology and medicine had
dominated the world. It was in the context of embranchements, unity
of type, and the species problem that Lamarck was criticized, for the
basis of Lamarck's system was a denial of the reality of species and a
denial of the existence o f four major and independent types.
The point that I wish to make is that it was in precisely these terms
that the French biologists criticized Darwin in the 1860's. They took
their stand on exactly the same platform as they had done thirty years
before and like their species they stood immutable. Indeed their very
definition of what was meant by the Darwinian theory illustrates this.
They all saw his theory as one which postulated that all living things
have descended from one prototype. That is, of course, not necessarily
the case, and clearly the German and British evolutionists did not see
that aspect as the most fundamental part of the theory. By defining

6. In an attempt to avoid confusion I have retained the French words l'$volu-

tion and l'~volutionniste in the text, thereby differentiating this concept from
that of evolution in the modern sense of the word. In addition the modern habit
of equating evolution with the French transformisrne can lead to difficulties and
should be avoided. It was possible to be a transformiste within the f~amework of
l'~volution. This imphed, however, a transformation only during the embryo-
logical stages of one species along a line that had been predetermined since it was
directed toward the final cause. Such ,a doctrine had very little in common with
the Darwinian theory. In other words un transformiste could be an evolutionist or
un $volutionniste, a situation which the French found as confusing then as we do
now. The blame for this rests squarely with the British, for they not only poached
a French word but changed its meaning.

278
The Initial Reactions of French Biologists to Darwin's Origin of Species

Darwinism in this rather peculiar way the French were distinguishing it

from the doctrine of l'~volution of the four embranchements. They
were also linking Darwin with Lamarck, who likewise had rejected the
concept of four embrachements. "Darwinism has nothing new in it,"
wrote Quatrefages, while Flourens described Lamarck as "the father of
Darwin." The same can be said for Ernest Faivre and Charles Naudi'n
and also for the French philosopher Paul Janet. All stressed in one way
or another that the theory put forward by Darwin and Wallace was
nothing but a restatement of an old concept put forward by Lamarck
and repudiated long ago by Cuvier and many others. Chauffard,
professor of medicine in Paris, spoke of Lamarck being "buried in past
oblivion when Darwin came." Clearly the French in 1859 were living in
the same world as the French in 1830; there had been no change in
outlook, the same facts led them irrevocably to the same conclusions.
This is probably the major reason why so many Frenchmen remained
completely indifferent to Darwin and why he never achieved the
support of a single important French biologist. This was no simple
bigoted chauvinism, which so many Anglo-Saxons see lurking under
every French bed; it was the inevitable result of the retention of the old
biological outlook. Those that did discuss Darwin did so in terms of
1830 and held to beliefs that were completely incompatible with the
science of either Germany or Britain.
E. Chauffard, Henri Milne Edwards, Charles Naudin and Paul Janet all
criticized Darwin from the standpoint of their belief in l~volution.
Janet saw the course of nature being directed to an end " o f which the
absolute type is precisely the cause itself. ''7

In this hypothesis, nature is no longer a kind of game where, all

things happening by chance, some effect is produced. Whatever that
effect may be, it acts conformably to a plan, a reason, a t h o u g h t . . .
It is a poem, a drama skilfully c o n d u c t e d . . . It is an ascending series
of means and of ends. 8

To Janet there was no other explanation for organic adaptation than

that of the principle of finality. Janet was not a biologist, but the same

7. Pan1 Janet, "Le mat~rialisme contemporain, une theorie anglais sur les causes
finales", Revue des Deux Mondes, 48 (1863), p. 586.
8. Paul Janet, The Materialism of the Present Day: A Critique o f Dr. Buchner's
System, trans G. Masson from 1st ed. (Paris, 1867), chap. 7, p. 200. This chapter
was omitted from the 2nd ed.

279
JOHN FARLEY

concepts can be seen in the writings of many biologists of the time.

Chauffard argued in 1868 that one arrives at the doctrine of final causes
a posteriori, and that there is "a superior design, a progressive and
ascending harmony," in nature. 9 His acceptance of l'~volution comes
out most clearly in a later essay of 1877, De la finalit~ dans les 6tres
vivants et de la doctrine de l'~volution.
Charles Naudin was one of the most important commentators on
Darwin and on evolution. R. E. Stebbins, 1° quite wrongly, concludes
that he was a tranformist, that is, an evolutionist, because he failed to
see a sharp distinction between races, varieties, and species. It is true
that he denied the immutability of species, but he was un dvolution-
niste, not an evolutionist, and all his statements that seem to imply
belief in evolution must be seen as part of his "th~orie de l~volutiorL"
The basic question for Naudin was whether species were created at the
beginning or whether they came to be through l~volution, the equiva-
lent, he wrote in an article in 1874, "to a prolonged creation. ' ' n
I admit there is one difference between the dvolution of Naudin and
that of his predecessors. He accepted that all beings come from "a
primordial, homogeneous, unstable, eminently plastic protoplasm." But
he then went on to say that "the creative power has traced at first the
grand paths of organization" from this protoplasm, reflecting thereby
the older embranchement concept. ~2 Later in the article of 1874 the
embryological aspect of his views becomes more apparent. He pictured
the protoorganism giving rise to mesoorganisms which gradually dis-
persed over the globe and became centers of secondary and tertiary
creations. This dvolution from the mesoorganisms was seen as a de-
velopment in which "all is determined in advance." Eggs develop in a
parallel fashion, one cannot derive one form from the eggs of another,
similarly living species cannot be derived from another "because all are
integrated, consolidated, invariable," except as prolonged remnants of

9. E. Chauffard, "Les luttes actuelles de la philosophic et de la science," in La

vie, p. 86.
10. R. E. Stebbins, French Reactions to Darwin [1859-1880J, unpub, diss.,
University of Minnesota, 1965; issued by University Microf'flms, Ann Arbor,
#65-15, 223.
11. Charles Naudin, "Les esp~ces affines et la th~orie de l'~volution", Bull Soc.
Botanique de France 21, 1874, pp. 240-272. Quotation from p. 245. Although
this article was written after 1870, it does represent a synthesis of views held and
put forward in articles during the 1860's.
12. Ibid., p. 246.

280
The Initial Reactions of French Biologists to Darwin's Origin of Species

primitive plasticity, la Indeed Naudin pointed out that ~volution had

been criticized because many of its enthusiasts had become trans-
formists.
It is never clear what Naudin means when he talks of transformisms
and species mutability. Stebbins remarks, correctly, that Naudin termed
his theory "une th~orie ~volution" rather than "une thdorie trans-
f o r m i s t , " but then he adds that without the metaphysical super-
structure, there was not too much difference. I would argue that there
was a world of difference and that it is meaningless to talk of a theory
without its metaphysical superstructure. It is precisely this super-
structure which I regard as representative of an early nineteenth
century biology which had not changed and into which Darwin's theory
was being placed. Naudin saw the organic world in terms of a becoming,
in terms of birth, development, adulthood, and death, the very con-
cepts against which the German Darwinists had turned many years
before.
The species question also loomed large in the discussions of evolution.
Pierre Flourens, for example, who was a direct pupil of Cuvier, quoted
Cuvier to the effect that while there are varieties within species, the
"interior characters" resist all influences and remain stable.14 He was
echoing the old controversy that variability and mutability were
fundamentally different and that the latter never occurs, a view which
biologists of the period reiterated constantly. The fact that recent
archaeological findings in Egypt had revealed that organisms had not
changed there for five to six thousand years was constantly mentioned
in support of the immutability of species.
Milne-Edwards discussed the species concept at some length. He
accepted the old premise that there was a fundamental difference
between species and varieties, and that there was a limit to the amount
of variability possible. To him there was as many creations as there
were species; where Milne-Edwards differs from the majority was in his
definition of species. His "species" were equivalent to our classes; so,
for example, he saw birds and insects as the fundamental types (species)
which do not change, and thought that the different birds and insects
are merely varieties brought about by "the tendency of nature to vary

13. Ibid., p. 253.

14. P. FlouIens, Examen du livre de M. Darwin sur l'origine des espdces (Paris,
1864), pp. 21 and 25.

281
 JOHN FARLEY

the degrees of perfection." The origin of each of these classes, or

"species," could only be understood by reference to the Creator. as
The paleobotanist Gaston de Saporta, who began his writings in the
1860's, often used expressions which resemble those of Darwin, and
some have concluded that he was a supporter of Darwin. He was, how-
ever, u n ~ v o l u t i o n n i s t e and used embryology as his model. This very
influential doctrine, which led many French biologists, like Saporta and
Naudin, into positions which one can confuse very easily with
Darwinism, was based on a concept that was completely foreign to the
theory of evolution. As Yvette Conry so rightly remarked.

The establishment of a real evolutionism outside the conf'mes of

embryology is necessary for a Darwinian revolution, even if
embryology has been able to be used as a p r o o f . . . It is not in the
problem of development that one must see a precursor of
Darwinism, on the contrary it is the latter which will impart its
theoretical contents to the concepts of development. 16

The general tone of the Darwinian debate in the 1860's, in which

Darwin is seen as a follower of Lamarck and discussed in the same
terms as those earlier applied to Lamarck, and in which the meta-
physical notion of "becoming" held sway, leads us to the next question.
What factors, in addition to the empiricism of Cuvier, led the French to
retain a biological outlook which the Germans had rejected and the
British had never had? Two factors stand out: the age-distribution
pattern of French biologists and the political, social, and theological
situation in the Second French Empire.

THE AGE DISTRIBUTION OF FRENCH BIOLOGISTS

It is now widely realized that every revolution in human thought

involved different reactions from different generations; those of the old
generation generally retain the old concept, those of the new generation
contain the Young Turks who lend their support to the new doctrine.
In this new generation, the most significant people are generally found
in the twenty-five- to thirty.five-year-old age bracket. Of those biolo-
gists who discussed Darwin during the 1860's, only Faivre was under

15. I-L Milne-Edwards, Rapport sur les progr~s r~cents des sciences zoologiques
en France (Paris, 1867), chap. 5, "Travaux relatifs ~ la zoologicg~n~rale."

282
The Initial Reactions of French Biologists to Darwin's Origin of Species

thirty-five in the year 1860. Gaston de Saporta was thirty-seven, and all
the rest were well over forty. 17
Examination of L'index biographie des membres et correspondants de
l'acaddmie des sciences shows that, excluding Faivre, there were no
influential French biologists born between 1825 and 1845, the very age
group in which one would expect to find some support for Darwin. Of
the 134 members and correspondents born between 1825 and 1845,
only 15 were biologists and none o f them was of high caliber. There
was, in other words, a complete generation gap during which the
French produced no biologist o f note. Furthermore, only one o f the
above 15 even discussed Darwin. This single biologist, Edmond Perrier,
who was born in 1844, began to discuss Darwin in the 1870's and by
the 1880's had become a leading advocate o f neolamarckism. TM The
generation o f biologists that one would expect to discuss Darwin in the
1860's simply did not exist. The few biologists that this generation did
produce 19 were generally lacking in talent and were content to limit
themselves to descriptive biology, classification, and some physiology.
The implications o f this become almost staggering when one realizes
that during the same period the Germans were siring Haeckel, Weisman,
Strasburger, yon Sachs, Robert Koch, and many others of first-class
stature. Certainly, without this generation Darwinism was almost
d o o m e d from the start. When one adds to this the political and religious
situation o f the 1860's, one understands the overwhelming odds facing
a doctrine such as the one p u t forward b y Darwin.

16. Y. Conry, Correspondance entre Charles Darwin et Gaston de Saporta,

(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1972), p. 61.
17. The birth dates of some of the important biologists of this period are:
Flourens, 1794; Milne-Edwazds, 1800; Quatrefages, 1810; Bernard, 1813; Naudin,
1815; Pasteur, 1822; Gaston de Saporta, 1823; Faivre. 1827.
18. Stebbins, "French Reactions," pp. 157-163.
19. In addition to Faivre and Pettier, they included the following: Boudier,
Filhol, Grand Bury, Hecket, Lortet, Maupas, Millardet, Miine-Edwards, jr.,
Prillieux, Ranvier, Sabatier, Sirodot, and van Tiegheim. The reasons for this
apparent generation gap among French biologists provides an exciting topic of
research for those more conversant with French nineteenth-century history than
the author. Was it reflected in the other sciences, or simply limited to biologists?
Does the absence of names imply a real absence of talent or a situation in which it
was extremely difficult to become a member of the Academy? The lack of
adequate scientific training in France is well known and is obviously a factor.
What were the job opportunities in mid-nineteenth-century France? Where had
this missing generation gone? Are they to be found in the academic frustration of
the provinces?

283
JOHN FARLEY

THE POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND OF

THE SECOND EMPIRE 2°

The decision of the provisional republican government of 1848 to

institute universal male suffrage in France was to have a profound
effect on the fortunes of the Republic. The peasants and villagers of
rural France were under the influence of the very forces that were
opposed to the Republic, especially the ultramontane Catholic Church.
In the presidential election of 1848, Napoleon sought for and received
the support of the Catholics through his election manifesto, which
promised that the state would protect religion in France, grant freedom
of education to the Church, and guarantee freedom and temporal
power to the pope in Italy. Since the Church controlled the vote of the
newly franchised voters, Napoleon was returned by a landslide and the
later election of the Legislative assembly resulted in a triumph for the
monarchists. The monarchists and Catholics then formed a new party
of the right, the party of the "Rue de Poitiers," with antirepublican
sentiments. The coup d'6tat of 1851 and the ensuing plebiscite resulted
in the birth of the Second Empire, with Napoleon at the helm sup-
ported by the Catholic Church. Most Catholics obviously agreed with
Montalembert's statement that "a vote for Louis Napoleon does not
signify approval of all he had done. The choice is between him and the
complete ruin of F r a n c e . . . I believe that, in following this course of
action, I am once more on the side of Catholics against the Revolu-
tion. ,,21
In the complex political and religious happenings of the Second
Empire, two aspects remained stable and of paramount importance.
The first was the absolute necessity for Napoleon of retaining the
support of the Catholic Church, and the second was the fear of
republicanism and the forces of revolution on the part of the regime

20. The summary of the political and religious controversies of the Second
Empire is based on the following texts: D. G. Charlton, Secular Religions in
France, 1815-1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963); A. Dansette,
Religious History of Modern France, trans J. Dingle (New York: Herder and
Herder, 1961); A. L. Guerard, French Prophets of Yesterday: A Study of Relig-
ious Thought under the Second Empire, (New York, 1920); W.M. Simon,
European Positivism in the Nineteenth-century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1963); J. M. Thompson, Louis Napoleon and the Second Empire (London: Black-
well, 1954); Gordon Wright, France in Modern Times, (Chicago: Rand
McNaUy, 1966).
21. Quotation from Dansette, Religious History, p. 275.

284
The Initial Reactions of French Biologists to Darwin's Origin of Species

and all factions of the Church. The Church and the state were locked in
an embrace because each needed the other to combat their common
enemy. The polarization was so complete that republicanism and
opposition to either the Church or the State were regarded as syn-
onymous. In this context any attack on the Church or its doctrines
was not only a theological statement, but also a political one. It was in
this polarized milieu that the Origin of Species first came to the atten-
tion of the French.
Opposition to the Church, and thus to the State, came not only from
the political forces of republicanism, but also from the growth of
positivism, materialism, and atheism. All these were intimately linked
to the scientific progress of the nineteenth century. For many, science
became a sort of religion in its own right. Taine, for example, wrote
that "the growth of science is infinite. We can look forward to the time
when it will reign supreme over the whole of thought and over all man's
actions." 22
In the face of these attacks the Church became more and more
authoritarian and in 1864 Pope Pius IX threw his weight behind the
conservative and orthodox wing of the Church. The papal encyclical of
1864 condemned any idea that society can exist while practising
religious tolerance. To this encyclical was appended a list of errors, the
Syllabus,~ which included the notorious error number 80: 'The Roman
Pontiff can and must make his peace with progress, liberalism, and
modern civilization and come to terms with them.'
It was in this polarized political and religious climate that the first
French edition of the Origin of Species appeared in 1862, 23 under the
pen of the materialist and anti-Catholic C16mence Royer. Two years
later, Ernest Renan's "Vie de Jdsus" and Edmond About's "Le progrbs"
had appeared. All these books were anti-Catholic to some degree or
other, and preached the gospel of progress and liberty. All were com-
plete anathema to the Chruch and to those who feared the chaos of
revolution. The point is that to the French, Darwin became not merely
a scientific document, not even so much an anti-Catholic document,
but above all a political document. In the polarized French society, to
support Darwin was to Support revolution.
The Life of Jes.us caused a sensation, 65,000 copies being sold in five
months Ernest Renan, born in 1823 and brought up in the Catholic

22. Ibid., p. 311.

23. An interesting account of the various French editions of the Origin of
Species is to be found in Stebbins, "French Reactions," pp. 39-60.

285
JOHN FARLEY

faith, left the seminary in 1845 convinced that truth and reason were
incompatible with Church teaching, although not with Christianity. He
rejected all supernatural beliefs and miracles and erected for himself a
new religion of science. His Vie de JOsus was an attempt to re-write the
life of Christ based on historical criticism and scientifically verifiable
events. He renounced miracles and thus denied the resurrection of
Christ:,

The strangest rumours were spread in the Christian communffy. The

cry, "he is risen," quickly spread amongst the disciples. Love caused
it to find ready credence evet3avhere. Whathad taken place? For the
historian, the life of Jesus finished with his last sigh. But such was
the impression he had left in the hearts of his disciples and a few
devoted women, that during some weeks it was as if he were living
and consoling them. ~

One can well understand that the Catholic Church regarded Renan as
the Antichrist. It certainly did not help Darwin that Renan was also
viewed as an evolutionist.
The republican Edmond About also attacked faith and religion as an
abdication of human reason, and preached the gospel of progressY
Progress too, was the doctrine of C16mence Royer.
C16mence Royer, born in 1830 and thus a member of the "missing
generation," was the absolute epitome of everything the Catholics
opposed: materialist, atheist, and republican. She not only altered the
title of the Origin o f Species to read "De l'origine des espbces, ou des
lois du progrks chez les ~tres organisOs, ""but attached a lengthy preface
to her translation in which she attacked the Church in no uncertain
terms. To misquote, "Hell has no fury like the wrath of a woman's
scorn." Her opening sentence set the tone for the whole work:

Yes, I believe in revelation, but a permanent revelation of man to

himself and by himself. A rational revelation which is only the result
of the progress of science and of contemporary knowledge, a
revelation always partial and relative which is affected by the

24. E. Renan, The Life of Jesus, English trans. (London, 1863), p. 296.
25. ]3. About, Leprogrds, 4th Ed. (Paris, 1867).

286
The Initial Reactions of French Biologists to Darwin's Origin of Species

acquisition of new truths and still more by the ,elimination of old

errors. 26

She then goes on to attack the Church. She argued that it was not the
doctrine of Jesus which set itself up in the ruins of the Roman Empire,
"but a totally different religion which, under the same name, seized the
world to dominate it." A religion which "rejected the principle of
rational speculation as the first source of all knowledge", a religion
which "put an end to all possible progress of all science of all philo-
sophy," a religion which "has impeded progress for fifteen centuries
and still does not cease to impede it in our day." It was, she went on, a
religion which was "spread by an ignorant, domineering, and corrupt
priesthood. ''27

There is no conquest of the human spirit which has not infringed on

their domaine, not a discovery which has not beaten a hole in their
system, which with great pains they have repaired each time,
plastered and painted, riffling the holes with paradoxes and support-
ing the creviced portions with sophismsY

There is no point in elaborating further. Royer was taking a political

and religious stand which could not but influence the way that French-
men came to view the Origin o f Species.
I am not arguing that the Church held a kind of moral inquisition on
the French scientists. I am not arguing that this represents another
episode in that fictitious struggle between science and theology, that, in
other words, the Church prevented the scientists from saying what he
really believed. Rather, the problem was not religion versus science, but
religion in science: 29 the two were intimately linked together to
produce an outlook in which the religious criticisms were as important
as the scientific ones, When it is realized that a religious criticism was
also a politcial one and that there was a "missing generation" of more
unorthodox minds, the impossibility of initiating a new outlook for

26. All quotations axe taken from Royer's 2nd ed., translated in 1866. This
contains the same preface as the first edition, with an additional introduction.
C16mence Royer, De l'origine des esp~cespars~lection naturelle, 2nd ed., (Paris,
1866), p. xv.
27. Ibid., p. xviii.
28. Ibid., p. xxvii.
29. This phrase is taken, of course, from Gillispie's Genesis and Geology.
(Cambridge: HaxvaxdUniversity Press, 1951.)

287
JOHN FARLEY

biology becomes apparent. It was an impossibility because French

biology embraced not only science, but also religious faith and a politi-
cal desire for a stable French society. For Darwin to become established
in France would have demanded a change in total outlook at the very
time when the Church had become violently opposed to any com-
promise with the faith, and at a time when French political opinion was
polarized between the majority, who feared a revolution, and the
minority who worked toward that end. Even the republican About had
to admit that any attempt to overthrow the Empire would result, not in
power being in the hands of statesmen, but in it being "in the sewers of
Paris". 3°
One would expect, assuming this premise to be correct, that the
critics of Darwin would refer to the religious and political repercussions
of Darwinism, and that this aspect would be most obvious in the
writings of the Catholic biologists. This is indeed the case; the writings
of Janet, Chauffard, Faivre, Flourens, Milne-Edwards, and Naudin have
a strong socioreligious bias. In addition, those few supporters of Darwin
were forced, also, to discuss these extrascientific aspects of their belief.
Even the Protestant Quatrefages included references to these debates.
Chauffard in his text in 1878, which was a reprinting of earlier essays,
some of which were written in the 1860's, pointed out very early that
"our utterances have never been words of disturbance for the present,
of disdain for glorious traditions, of danger for the future. ''31 In his
essay of 1868, directed against materialism, with which Darwin was
associated, he pointed out that such discussions "are not a useless and
vain c l a m o u r . . , far from that, they are the major concern of the day,
they carry in them great destinies, the destiny of science, those perhaps
of the country itself. ''32 And later, after the Commune of 1871 and the
invasion of the materialistic Prussians, he put the blame for these events
on the attempt by materialistic science to replace a moral order with an
economic and political one. The biological sciences, he wrote, "lead to
general doctrines, the subversive application of which leads to the ruin
of civilization.''33 The botanist Charles Naudin saw fit to quote the
remarks of another botanist, Alexis Jordan:

To reject this criterion of hereditary permanence, is to remove all

30. About, Le progr~s, p. 215.

31. Chauffard, La vie, p. 18.
32. Ibid., p. 63.

288
The Initial Reactions of French Biologists to Darwin's Origin of Species

possibility of establishing some solid distinctions, it is to reduce

everything to simple hypotheses, to the arbitrary, to the fantasy of
individual valuations, it is, in a word, to ground science in scep-
ticism, which leads to its destruction. 34

Altl/ough these remarks are not political in our view, for the Frenchman
of the 1860's, they carried political implications.
The essayist Alfred Sudre, who in 1860 wrote an attack on Darwin,
was no doubt drawn into the fray because of political motivations. In
1849 he had written an attack on communism, in which he had
remarked that it was everyone's duty "to combat with all the power of
his soul and intellect, those doctrines which are a permanent menace
against social order. ''35 In 1862, the same year as Royer's translation,
the famous Protestant historian and politician Franqois Guizot, who
had been premier during the Orleanist period (1840-1848), wrote a
book in response to materialist attacks on the Catholic Church, which
he regarded as attacks on the whole Christian Church. "Under the
blows with which they attacked Christian dogma, all the religious
edifice collapses and all the social edifice shakes; the Empire, even the
essence of religion vanishes. ''36
The major force of the religious argument against Darwin was, how-
ever, directed against the question of the origin of life. All the Catholic
scientists listed above focused a great deal of their attention on this
question. Despite the fact that Darwin himself had implied a super-
natural origin of life, the French like the Germans realized that
Darwinism logically demanded an abiogenetic origin of life. This
question carried with it enormous religious implications, for as Guizot
pointed out more than once, "there is no natural religion, for as soon as
one abolishes the supernatural, religion also disappears. ''37 The essential
beliefs of the Christian Church rested on creation as well as Divine
Providence, Original Sin, Incarnation, and Redemption. Darwinism on
this point above any other had touched the very core of Catholicism.

33. Ibid., p. 461. This was part of an article published in 1872 and entitled "La
science et l'ordre social."
34. Quotation from Naudin, "Les esp~ces affmes,"p. 241.
35. Alfred Sudre, Histoire du comrnunisme ou r~futation historique des utopies
socialistes (Paris, 1849), p. iv.
36. F. Guizot, L.~glise et la soci~tO chr~tiennes en 1861, 4th ed. (Paris, 1862),
p. 18.
37. Ibid., p, 25.

289
JOHN FARLEY

There were other reasons why the Darwinian debate was strongly
focused on this point. Spontaneous generation had come to be seen as
the only way Lamarck could explain the continuous existence o f
primitive forms o f life. 3s At the time o f Lamarck, a belief in spontan-
eous generation had been perfectly acceptable, but by 1860 the
doctrine was under severe attack. The famous Pasteur-Pouchet debate,
in which Pasteur was clearly supported by all the influential French
biologists, took place at exactly the same time that Darwin arrived on
the scene. French scientists were aware that the doctrine of evolution
was essentially beyond experimental verification, but they were also
aware that the one aspect of Darwinism that was open to experimental
probing was the problem of spontaneous generation. Darwin was
viewed as demanding an abiogenetic origin of life, yet experiments had
shown heterogenesis and thus abiogenesis is to be untenable. 39 On this
point science and religion were united and nobody, it seemed, could
deny this. Abiogenesis was as abhorrent to science as it was to the
Church. It is not surprising then that the rejection of spontaneous
generation played a major role in the rejection of Darwinism.
The impact of spontaneous generation on the Darwin controversy is
seen most clearly in Flourens' book, Examen du livre de M. Darwin sur
l'origine des esp~ces (1864), in which 49 of the 170 pages (30 percent)
are devoted to a historical account of the overthrow of the belief in
spontaneous generation. "Spontaneous generation is no more," he con-
cluded, "Pasteur has not only illuminated the question, he has resolved
it. ''4° Faivre, too, stressed this problem almost as much as Flourens. In
1860 he wrote in support of Pasteur against Pouchet and pointed out
that lacking proof o f spontaneous generation we must reject it, since,

38. Biologists had come to see Lamarck's theory as a "movement of organisms

on an endless escalator." Ernst Mayr, "Lamarck Revisited", J. Hist. Biol. 5 no. 1
(Spring 1972), 71. Such a system then demanded a continual replenishment of
the lowest forms by spontaneous generation. Dr. R. W. Burkhardt has informed
me, however, that far from accepting spontaneous generation because his evolu-
tionary theory demanded it, Lamarck was only able to develop his evolutionary
theory because he had accepted spontaneous generation.
39. Elsewhere I have termed this conflict "the dilemma of abiogenesis." See
Farley, "Spontaneous Generation Controversy." One should note in passing that
the political, theological, and sociological implications of the Pasteur-Pouchet
debate were as profound as those of the debate surrounding Darwin. See J. Farley
and G. Geison, 'Science, Politics and Spontaneous Generation in Igth Century
France: The Pasteur-Pouchet Debate'. Bull Hist. Med. (1974), in press.
40. Flourens, Examen du livre, p. 170.

290
The Initial Reactions of French Biologists to Darwin's Origin of Species

"it is enough to recall the consequences to which the doctrine of

spontaneity can lead," namely, "if we are logical, it leads to two errors:
the transformism of species in natural history and pantheism in philo-
sophy. ''41 In his text of 1868 he reiterated this warning, pointing out
that the doctrine of transformism was not legitimate,

neither by its principle, which is conjecture; neither by its deduc-

tions which have no basis in reality; neither by its proof which are
hardly probable; neither by its two extreme consequences which
science as well as human dignity forbid us from accepting: spontan-
eous generation and the intimate and degrading relationship of man
and brute. 42

Paul Janet saw the question of spontaneous generation as one of the

keystones of his attack on materialism, which in turn implied
Darwinism. Milne-Edwards, who had already produced works attacking
the doctrine of spontaneous generation, pointed out in his Rapports
that while we must dismiss the crude idea of the Creator molding brute
matter in his hands, we must affirm that the origin of life and the origin
of all life forms can only result from "the intervention of an occult
,~43
cause.
Charles Naudin, since he accepted that all life had developed from a
protoorganism, was less rigorous in his attack on Pouchet and on
heterogenesis. He admitted that heterogenesis was not disproven and
was even a possibility since all organic matter could contain some
organo-plastic force. Nevertheless, abiogenesis was inconceivable to
him, there being in his mind an unbridgeable gap between an agglomera-
tion of chemicals and a living being. The only way to explain the origin
of his primordial blasterne was, he maintained, by reference to God, the
final cause of the development of life forms.
Alfred Sudre a l s o attacked Pouchet's views in terms of the
materialism inherent in them, and again stressed that to accept hetero-
genesis is also to acept transformism. Sudre was clearly a creationist;
he rejected transformism since it implied a belief in the unity of types,
and he rejected the concept of l~volution. 44

41. E. Faivre, "La question des g~n&ations spontan~es," Memoires de

l'Acaddmie des Sciences, Belles Lettres et Arts, Lyon, 10 (1860), p. 154-172.
42. E. Faivre, La variabilit$ des esp&es et ses limits (Paris, 1868) p. 182.
43. Milne-Edwards, Rapport, p. 430.
44. Alfred Sudre, "Des origines de la vie et de la distinction des esp~ces dans
l'ordre anim~," Revue Europ&nne, 10 (1860), 582-605, 820-837.

291
JOHN FARLEY

Pouchet himself, since he was not an evolutionist, was forced to

counter the argument that he was lending support to the Darwinian
hypothesis. His efforts were of no avail; his system was viewed con-
tinually as a materialistic one. Rumor, once begun, was impossible to
stop, particularly in the polarized climate of mid-nineteenth-century
France. Pouchet was a believer in heterogenesis, not abiogenesis; he was
a vitalist (he believed in une force plastique) not a materialist; he was a
believer in successive creations not a transformist. For Pouchet both
heterogenesis and the successive creations only resulted in the forma-
tion of eggs from organic matter and not in the direct formation of
adult organisms. For Pouchet, as for Oken and all the followers of
Naturphilosophie, there was no death, only a transition to a new life. 4s
In addition to their attacks on the doctrine of spontaneous gene-
ration, these biologists took great pains to point out that their views on
the origin of life and all its forms were in complete agreement with
religious doctrine. Naudin, for example, argued that the biblical
passages of Genesis described a progressive and irregular l~volution and
not a gradual transformism. In Genesis the various kinds of being are
created from the elements and not from each other and that such
creations involved periods of activity and rest. He even went to the
pains of reconciling a belief in Adam and Eve with his own system, He
saw Adam as developing from the protoorganism and being without sex
or, better, having !both sexes at the same time. Adam at this stage was
not the virile sexualmale but rather a human larva which could only
arrive at the final adult stage after another period of l'dvolution. This
last phase was a long period of quiescent nymphlike humanity in which
the two sexual partners gradually appeared. (Naudin's interest in plant-
breeding leads one to suspect that he was preoccupied with sex.)
The doctrine of l'~volution was essentially theoscientific in nature. It
was based on the concept of design, in which all development followed
.predetermined pathways, a concept which demanded a controlling
mind. Janet and Naudin talked of "the principle of finality"; others
termed it "the providential will." Milne-Edwards, in many ways the
least speculative of this group of Catholic biologists, saw the animal
kingdom being constituted "as if the guide-lines we set forth had
effectively directed nature in the work of creation. ''46 Faivre, in his

45. The basis of Pouchet's beliefs is best gained from cha~ 2 of his H~tkrogenie
ou train de la gdndration spontande (Paris, 1859).
46. MilnvEdwards, Rapport, p. 435.

292
The Initial Reactions of French Biologists to Darwin's Origin of Species

attack on the doctrine of spontaneous generation, maintained that

science and religion were inextricably interwoven and that French
science not only dealt with material things but remained attached to
the true purpose of science.

While in France the doctrine of spontaneous generation is debated,

in England and Germany one writes of the correlation of physical
forces, the date of man's appearance on the earth, the origin,
development and extinction of species; we demand calculations,
observations, experiments, enlightenment for solutions to the grave
problems of p h i l o s o p h y . . , lifting us from the consideration of
physical laws to that of general truths, which enlighten our reason
and confirm our religious beliefs. 47

The essayist Alfred Sudre, who was drawn into the debate for religious,
moral and political reasons, naturally gave great play to these factors in
his paper of 1860:

Thus we find ourselves safeguarding the supernatural origin of life,

creation in the animal domain, the permanence of types, the unity
of humanity, these great truths which form, so to say, the point of
intersection and the reciprocal sanctions of the biological and the
moral sciences. 48

There were some supporters of Darwin, although all were obscure and
mediocre scientists. It is significant that these supporters were forced to
show that the Origin of Species was not an antireligious document and
were forced to discuss the contentious issue of spontaneous generation.
We must also note that these supporters still discussed Darwin in the
context of the old outlook and were thus unable to put forward any
convincing arguments in his favor. Since these spokesmen were using
the language of Flourens and Faivre and so on, it is not surprising that
their arguments were weak and unconvincing.
Henri Montucci argued that Darwin had in fact denied spontaneous
generation and thus was in accord with Genesis. This, as far as Darwin's
publications were concerned, is true, but Montucci failed to see the
logical inconsistency in this view. However, at the end of his article,
Montucci remarked that abiogenesis could occur since "it is a trans-
formation, a metamorphosis similar to those on which Darwin has so
47. Faivre, "La question des g6n~rations spontan~es," p. 171.
48. Sudre, "Des origines de la vie," p. 837.

293
JOHN FARLEY

well established his ingenious system," and that "we have perceived no
reason, scientific or religious, to repudiate it. ''49 Montucci was
obviously trying to have his cake and eat it too. Darius Rossi, another
obscure supporter of Darwin, accepted that heterogenesis does occur
and that to say otherwise is to limit the power of God. s°
The botanist Germain de Saint-Pierre may well have been a partial
supporter of Darwin, although his doctrine rested on the belief in
"l~volution and the regular manifestation of the laws of the Creator, in
all of creation and at all times. ''sl As noted above, such a system had an
embryological base with little relationship to Darwinism. He admitted
that the system of the variability of species demanded a "spontaneous
production of primordial forms," which he preferred to call
"protorganie," because that term implied a belief in a creative power
rather than materialism. He denied both successive creations and the
successive spontaneous generations of Pouchet, and thus accepted that
following "protorganie" new species were produced by deviations
during successive generations. Certainly he admitted that "everything in
the species is variability, transformations, metamorphoses, variab-
i l i t y . . , variability," but he probably meant a rather vague trans-
formism within the framework of l'~volution, a position rather similar
to the views of Naudin.
The British had their Huxley, the Germans their Haeckel and their
Weisman; the French had their Montucci, their Rossi (neither of whom
were actually French) and perhaps their Saint-Pierre. They also had
Madame Royer.
In many ways Jean Louis Armand de Quatrefages de Breau stands out
from the other critics of Darwin in having a much more sophisticated
understanding of what Darwin had said. We would expect him to differ
from those previously discussed because he was a Protestant and more
especially because his major interests were in the field of anthropology
and anthropologists were far more favorable to Darwin than the biolo-
gical community - a separate study is needed to account for these

49. Henri Montucci, "Notes critiques sur la marche et le d6veloppement des

sciences," Revue Contemporaine, 15 (1860), 159-170. Montucci was a mathe-
matician and astronomer who, although born in Berlin and educated in Italy,
spent most of his adult life in Paris. There is a possibility he engaged in left-wing
political activity.
50. Darius C. Rossi, Le Darwinisme et les g~nkrations spontankes (Paris, 1870).
51. Germain de Saint-Pierre, "G6n6ration dite spontan6e ou protorganie (h6t6-
rog6nie)", Bull Soc. Botanique de France, 16 (1869), p. 204.

294
The Initial Reactions of French Biologists to Darwin's Origin of Species

differences. Nevertheless, even in Quatrefages one sees the same points

being raised, the same basic stands being taken. He criticized, for
example, both the religious and the materialists dogmas, and yet, after
stating that science and religion were concerned with two different
facets of human knowledge, he admitted that at the level of the higher
eternal truths they fortify each other:

In these high regions of the intelligence and of the heart, the points
of discussion disappear before the eternal t r u t h s . . , in that they
attribute to the Creator the homage of the creation, s2

His antagonism toward Darwinism rested mainly on his view that there
were five separate kingdoms of being with an unbridgeable chasm
between each; the sidereal, mineral, vegetable, animal, and human king-
dom. These kingdoms formed an ascending scale in which a new force
was added in each step. Plant life differed from the minerals by the
possession of "la vie, the unknown cause of the totality of special
phenomena peculiar to living beings. ''sa
Quatrefages, like many of the other biologists, recognized that there
was much variation in nature and that natural selection could well
account for this variation; but he maintained that it could not account
for any transformation of species. Variation within species was per-
fectly acceptable, but transformism was not.
The strong empirical basis of much of the French criticism comes out
most forcefully in the writings of Quatrefages. s4 He attacked the
Darwinian explanation for the absence of intermediate forms in the
fossil record and quoted the well-known findings of Egyptian archaeo-
logy. But, like the others, he seems, to our modern eyes, to have spent a
disproportionally long time on the question of the initial prototype. To

52. Armand de Quatrefages, "Histoire naturelle de l'homme. Unit6 de l'esp~ce

humaine," Revue des Deux Mondes, 30 (1860), 807-833. Quotation from
p. 809.
53. Ibid., p. 820.
54. In 1868 and 1869 Quatrefages published a series of five articles in the Revue
des Deux Mondes: "Histoire naturelle g~n~rale. Origines des esp~ces animales et
v6g6tales": no. 1: "Les pr6curseurs fran~ais de Darwin," 78 (1868), 832-860;
no. 2: "Th6orie de Darwin, 79 (1869), 208-240; no. 3: "Discussion des theories
transformistes," 80 (1869), 64-95; no. 4: "Discussion des theories transformiste.
l'esp~ce et la race," 80 (1869), 397-432; no. 5: "Theories de la transformation
progressive et de la transformation brusque-Origine Simienne de l'homme," 80
(1869), 638-672.

295
JOHN FARLEY

my knowledge, he was the only biologists in any country to realize that

Darwin and Lamarck differed on one point at least: Lamarck's was a
system of progress, Darwin's one of adaptation. It was this doctrine of a
progressibly unfolding nature that had led people to see in Lamarck the
necessity for a continuous spontaneous generation, since there was no
other way to account for the continuous occurence of primitive forms.
Because these forms were continually moving up the scale, they needed
continual replenishment from below. Darwin, however, could explain
the continous existence of primitive forms by adaptation and did not
require a continual replenishment. Quatrefages recognized this and saw
that the overthrow of heterogenesis was a blow to Lamarckism but not
to Darwinism: Nevertheless, he then went on to say that Lamarck was
more logical than Darwin in this concept, although unfortunately it
rested on an experimental error. He pointed out that Darwin does
demand the existence of a prototype, but to conclude that this being
came into existence only once during a limited span of time in the past
"is a supposition which is impossible to accept for whatever takes place
exclusively has no place in science. ''ss This was exactly the stand taken
by Henry Bastian in Britain, who also argued that uniformitarianism
demanded the acceptance of continuous spontaneous generation, s6
In many ways Quatrefages was a blend of the old biological outlook
and the new forces of positivistic science making themselves felt in
France at the close of the 1860's. He denied that species were mutable
and based much of his argument on empirical evidence, but he refrained
from taking any real stand on the question. His concluding statement to
his series of articles on the problem of evolution mirrored the stand to
be taken by the positivists:

We study only facts, we have not been able yet to penetrate the
workshop from whence they come, we can then say nothing on the
processes of formation.S7

Positivism was part of a universal movement against the Church and

toward scientism and materialism. In Britain such a movement took the
form of modifying the doctrines of the Protestant church, but in
France no such compromise was possible. In France, therefore, an

55. Quatrefages, article no. 3, p. 90. He also discussed this problem at some
length in a~ticle no. 2.
56. For details see Farley, "Spontaneous Generation Controversy."
57. Quatrefages, article no. 5, p. 672.

296
The Initial Reactions of French Biologists to Darwin's Origin of Species

attempt was made to replace Catholicism with other religions, among

which was that of positivism. Positivism held that human life could be
improved by discovering a science of man based on the reliable and
fruitful methods of the natural sciences.
The method positivists adopted was one of progressive generalizations
deduced from previous facts, leading eventually to general laws. The
scientist Berthelot saw such laws extending beyond immediate relation-
ships between phenomena to systems embracing morality and human
and universal destiny. Positivism was based on scientific empiricalism
but was directed toward humanity. It was a doctrine of progress leading
upward to the moral sentiments of man. In turn, the ideals implied in
such sentiments were indicative of the sovereign reality in which these
ideals existed. This reality, of God, was "the center and the mysterious
and inaccessible unity toward which the universal order converged. ''ss
Initially, and in these terms, such a religion would have very little
sympathy with Darwinism.
In 1867, Emile Littr6 founded the positivist journal La Philosophie
Positive, indicative of a split that had taken place within the movement
following the death of Comte. Some remained attached to the social
and religious aspects of positivism, while Littr6 and others became in-
volved with the scientific aspects of the doctrine. It was this group
which began to discuss biological issues through the medium of their
journal. This school took as its premise that science must limit itself to
what is knowable by observation, experiment, and comparisons of data.
They were prepared, therefore, to admit that there is much about
which we can know nothing.
This school numbered among its members some biologists, including
the famous anatomists and histologist Charles Robin. In the first
volume of La Philosophie Positive he discussed the nature of biology at
some length, s9 Clearly, in the type of biology which he described there
was simply no place for a theory of the type put forward by Darwin,
although Lamarck could, and did, find a home there. The purpose of
biology was to discover the laws of organization and the laws of
acitivity, for which it became necessary to study biology from two
standpoints, the static and the dynamic. Static biology was concerned
with the laws of organization, either viewed internally, in which case

58. M. Bertholet, "La science id~ale et la science positive," Revue des Deux
Mondes, 48 (1863), 442-459.
59. Charles Robin, "De la biologic. Son objet et son but, ses relations avec les
autres sciences, la nature et l'~tendue du eharnp de ses recherches, ses moyens
d'investigation," La Philosophie Positive, 1 (1867), 78-101, 212-232, 392-412.

297
JOHN FARLEY

one was dealing with anatomy, or externally, in which case one was
dealing with "biotaxique." In the word of Robin, the former "makes
known to us the interior order which prevails between the naturally
solid parts of each organism," and the latter makes clear "the exterior
order which, in both time and space, exists between all the coexistent
and individually succeeding beings. ''6° Static anatomy was the study of
the relationship that existed between organs of an indivual being; static
biotaxique studied the relationship between beings in the animal series.
The operative word is "static," and the tools were the descriptive
sciences of anatomy, histology, and morphology. Dynamic biology
dealt with physiology and "m&ologie," or the reciprocal relations of
living beings with their milieu. Such a biology could deal with that
aspect of Lamarckism which dealt with the relationships between
organisms and their environment. Indeed, by 1868 Royer herself had
come to see Lamarck as a follower of positivist philosophy, 61 and it was
the positivists who were to resurrect Lamarck from his earlier oblivion.
But this was to occur in later years. In the 1860's Darwinism was not
simply an unproven and unprovable hypothesis, but an illegitimate
study so far as positivistic biology was concerned.
Positivism was dearly a new idealogy; it embraced not only
positivists' science but also their religion and their politics. It was to
play a great part in the Darwinian controversy during the Republic but
during the Second Empire its influence was minimal.
History concerns itself with what was, not with what might have been.
Nevertheless, the tragically early death of the invertebrate anatomist
and embryologists, Edouard Clapar~de, in 1871 at the age of thirty-
nine, was surely the final blow to Darwinism. It would be fair to call
Clapar~de a Darwinist. He did not regard Darwinism as a complete
solution to the problems, but remarked that " o f all the theories on the
origin of species, that of Mr. Darwin is without contradiction, the most
logical, the most satisfactory and at the same time one of the most
simple. ''62 His papers on Darwin show a thorough and sophisticated
understanding of the issues and his reviews can only be considered
favorable to Darwin. He seems to have resisted becoming a French-
speaking Darwinist by only one piece of scientific argument, although

60. Ibid., p. 82.

61. Cl6mence Royer, "Lamarck, sa vie, ses travaux et son syst~me," La Philo-
sophie Positive, 3 (1868), 173-205, 333-372; 4 (1869), 5-30.
62. E. Clapar6de, "M. Darwin et sa th6orie de la formation des esp6ces," Revue
Germanique, 16 (1861), 523-559; 17 (1861), 232-263. Quotation from p. 261.

298
The Initial Reactions of French Biologists to Darwin's Origin of Species

in such cases factors of personality loom very large. He pointed out that
the doctrine of successive creations could be accepted if the laws which
govern their appearances were known, if there was a periodicity which
could be formulated. Such periodicity was a possibility because the
doctrine assumed periods of stability between periods of change. Since
catastrophists claimed that the present was a period of stability, their
doctrine was beyond attack. Darwin, on the other hand, demanded
constant change but was unable to provide proof of this. This was the
only anti-Darwinian statement Clapar~de made; otherwise he accepted
that there was no fundamental difference between varieties and species,
that the geological attack on Darwinism was invalid, and that the
arguments which Darwin had taken from geographical distribution,
embryology, and so on, were sound.

To all these questions, the partisan of immediate creations always

answers by the Creator's love of type and categories of thought. In
other words, he recognizes his incompetence. 6a

In 1870 he attacked Wallace's position that man himself could not have
evolved through the agency of natural selection. To Clapar~de such a
position was' clearly untenable: one either accepted natural selection or
one did not; if divine force was necessary to account for the origin of
man, it was necessary to account for the origin of other creatures.
There was absolutely no doubt in the paper attacking Wallace that
Clapar~de favored the mechanism of natural selection, e*
Clapar~de was not a Frenchman but a Swiss, but since he wrote in
French and in the French journals one can consider him part of the
French reaction to Darwin. Clapar~de was unique not only in support-
ing Darwin, but in going to Berlin in 1853 to study under the great
Johannes Mi~ller.6s In other words, at twenty-one years of age he went
to study at the court where a new mechanistic science was being taught
and where the majority of its adherents were to become supporters of
Darwin. This man surely proves my point. A member of the "missing
generation," he was attracted to the new German science, returned to
Geneva, and almost became a complete Darwinist.

63. Ibid., p. 559.

64. E. Clapar~de, "Remarques ~ propos de l'ouvrage de M. Alfred Russel
Wallace sur la th~orie de la s61ection naturelle," Archives des Sciences Physiques
et Naturelles, 38 (1870), 160-189.
65. Henri de Saussure, "Notice sur Edouard Clapar~de," Archives des Sciences
Physiques et Naturelles, 42 (1871), 51-79.

299
JOHN FARLEY

Darwinism in France was powerless. It stood face to face with a

hostile ideology which involved a hostile science, a hostile religion, and
a hostile political philosophy. It stood face to face with an old genera-
tion with old ideas. This country whose richness had produced men of
the calibre of Buffon, Lamarck, Cuvier, St. Hilaire, Bernard, and Pasteur
was now tragically barren. The French reaction to Darwin was but one
example of the demise of French science in the middle of the nine-
teenth century.

Acknowledgments

This paper is part of a general study on the spontaneous generation

controversy supported by a grant from the Canada Council. As always,
I wish to thank the members of the Department of the History of
Science at Harvard University for their continuing interest and
provision of research space. Special thanks are also due to Professor
John Godfrey of the Dalhousie History Department for his initial
guidance through the morass of nineteenth-century French politics.

300