CHAPTER VI.
POSITION IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE; OPINIONS OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND SOME LATER BIOLOGISTS De Blainville, a worthy successor of Lamarck, in his posthumous book, _Cuvier et Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire_, pays the highest tribute to his predecessor, whose position as the leading naturalist of his time he fully and gratefully acknowledges, saying: "Among the men whose lectures I have had the advantage of hearing, I truly recognize only three masters, M.de Lamarck, M.Claude Richard, and M.Pinel" (p.

43).

He also speaks of wishing to write the scientific biographies of Cuvier and De Lamarck, the two zooelogists of this epoch whose lectures he most frequently attended and whose writings he studied, and "who have exercised the greatest influence on the zooelogy of our time" (p.

42).
Likewise in the opening words of the preface he refers to the rank taken by Lamarck: "The aim which I have proposed to myself in my course on the principles of zooelogy demonstrated by the history of its progress from Aristotle to our time, and consequently the plan which I have followed to attain this aim, have very naturally led me, so to speak, in spite of myself, to signalize in M.de Lamarck the expression of one of those phases through which the science of organization has to pass in order to arrive at its last term before showing its true aim.

From my point of view this phase does not seem to me to have been represented by any other naturalist of our time, whatever may have been the reputation which he made during his life." He then refers to the estimation in which Lamarck was held by Auguste Comte, who, in his _Cours de Philosophie Positive_, has anticipated and even surpassed himself in the high esteem he felt for "the celebrated author of the _Philosophie Zoologique_." The eulogy by Cuvier, which gives most fully the details of the early life of Lamarck, and which has been the basis for all the subsequent biographical sketches, was unworthy of him.