Note 1133 — Chapter VII · (continued 2)

The first work of Haüy appeared in 1784 (Quérard, France Littéraire, vol. iv. p. 41); but he had read two special memoirs in 1781. Cuvier, Eloges, vol. iii. p. 138. The intellectual relation between his views and those of his predecessor must be obvious to every mineralogist; but Dr. Whewell, who has noticed this judiciously enough, adds (Hist. of the Induc. Sciences, vol. iii. pp. 229, 230): ‘Unfortunately Romé de Lisle and Haüy were not only rivals, but in some measure enemies…. Haüy revenged himself by rarely mentioning Romé in his works, though it was manifest that his obligations to him were immense; and by recording his errors while he corrected them.’ The truth, however, is, that so far from rarely mentioning De Lisle, he mentions him incessantly; and I have counted upwards of three hundred instances in Haüy's great work, in which he is named, and his writings are referred to. On one occasion he says of De Lisle, ‘En un mot, sa cristallographie est le fruit d'un travail immense par son étendue, presque entièrement neuf par son objet, et très-précieux par son utilité.’ Haüy, Traité de Minéralogie, Paris, 1801, vol. i. p. 17. Elsewhere he calls him, ‘cet habile naturaliste; ce savant célèbre,’ vol. ii. p. 323; ‘ce célèbre naturaliste,’ vol. iii. p. 442; see also vol. iv. pp. 51, &c. In a work of so much merit as Dr. Whewell's, it is important that these errors should be indicated, because we have no other book of value on the general history of the sciences; and many authors have deceived themselves and their readers, by implicitly adopting the statements of this able and industrious writer. I would particularly caution the student in regard to the physiological part of Dr. Whewell's History, where, for instance, the antagonism between the methods of Cuvier and Bichat is entirely lost sight of, and while whole pages are devoted to Cuvier, Bichat is disposed of in four lines.