The quotations from his _Philosophie zoologique_, published in 1809, given below, will show what were the results of his meditations on the relations between science and religion. Had his way of looking at this subject prevailed, how much misunderstanding and ill-feeling between theologians and savants would have been avoided! Had his spirit and breadth of view animated both parties, there would not have been the constant and needless opposition on the part of the Church to the grand results of scientific discovery and philosophy, or too hasty dogmatism and scepticism on the part of some scientists. In Lamarck, at the opening of the past century, we behold the spectacle of a man devoting over fifty years of his life to scientific research in biology, and insisting on the doctrine of spontaneous generation; of the immense length of geological time, so opposed to the views held by the Church; the evolution of plants and animals from a single germ, and even the origin of man from the apes, yet as earnestly claiming that nature has its Author who in the beginning established the order of things, giving the initial impulse to the laws of the universe. As Duval says, after quoting the passage given below: "Deux faits son à noter dans ce passage: d'une part, les termes dignes et conciliants dans lesquels Lamarck établit la part de la science et de la religion; cela vaut, mieux, même en tenant compte des différences d'epoques, que les abjurations de Buffon."[198] The passage quoted by M. Duval is the following one: "Surely nothing exists except by the will of the Sublime Author of all things. But can we not assign him laws in the execution of his will, and determine the method which he has followed in this respect? Has not his infinite power enabled him to create an order of things which has successively given existence to all that we see, as well as to that which exists and that of which we have no knowledge? As regards the decrees of this infinite wisdom, I have confined myself to the limits of a simple observer of nature."[199] In other places we find the following expressions: "There is then, for the animals as for the plants, an order which belongs to nature, and which results, as also the objects which this order makes exist, from the power which it has received from the SUPREME AUTHOR of all things. She is herself only the general and unchangeable order that this Sublime Author has created throughout, and only the totality of the general and special laws to which this order is subject. By these means, whose use it continues without change, it has given and will perpetually give existence to its productions; it varies and renews them unceasingly, and thus everywhere preserves the whole order which is the result of it."[200] ~ ~ ~ ~ ~