"His two daughters were left penniless. In the year 1832 I myself saw Mlle. Cornélie de Lamarck earning a scanty pittance by fastening dried plants on to paper, in the museum of which her father had been a professor. Many a species named and described by him must have passed under her eyes and increased the bitterness of her regret.

Introduction Biographique to M. Martins' edition of the Phil. Zool., pp. ix-xx.

66

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: GENERAL MISCONCEPTION CONCERNING LAMARCK-HIS PHILOSOPHICAL POSITION

F CUVIER," SAYS M. ISIDORE GEOFFROY St. Hilaire," is the modern successor of Linnaeus, so is Lamarck of Buffon. But Cuvier does not go so far as Linnaeus, and Lamarck goes much farther than Buffon. Lamarck, moreover, took his own line, and his conjectures are not only much bolder, or rather more hazardous, but they are profoundly different from Buffon's.

"It is well known that the vast labours of Lamarck were divided between botany and physical science in the eighteenth century, and between zoology and natural philosophy in the nineteenth; it is, however, less generally known that Lamarck was long a partisan of the immutability of species. It was not till 1801, when he was already old, that he freed himself from the ideas then generally prevailing. But Lamarck, having once made up his mind, never changed it; in his ripe age he exhibits all the ardour of youth in propagating and defending his new convictions.

"In the three years 1801, 1802, 1803, he enounced them twice in his lectures, and three times in his writings. He returns to the subject and states his views precisely in 1806,3 and in 1809 he devotes a great part of his principal work, the Philosophie Zoologique, to their demonstration. Here he might have rested and have

1 Hist. Nat. Gén., vol. ii, p. 404, 1859.

2 Système des Animaux sans Vertèbres, Paris, in-8, an. ix (1801); Discours d'Ouverture, p. 12, etc.; Recherches sur l'Organisation des Corps Vivants, Paris, in-8, 1802, p. 50, etc.; Discours d'Ouverture d'un Cours de Zoologie pour l'an ix, Paris, in-8, 1803. This discourse is entirely devoted to the consideration of the question, "What is Species ?"

3 Discours d'Ouverture d'un Cours de Zoologie, Paris, in-8, 1806, p. 8, etc.

See following chapter.

quietly awaited the judgment of his peers; but he is too much convinced; he believes the future of science to depend so much upon his doctrine that to his dying day he feels compelled to explain it further and insist upon it. When already over seventy years of age he enounces it again, and maintains it as firmly as ever in 1815, in his Histoire des Animaux sans Vertèbres, and in 1820 in his Système des Connaissances Positives.1

"This doctrine, so dearly cherished by its author, and the conception, exposition, and defence of which so laboriously occupied the second half of his scientific career, has been assuredly too much admired by some, who have forgotten that Lamarck had a precursor, and that that precursor was Buffon. It has, on the other hand, been too severely condemned by others who have involved it in its entirety in broad and sweeping condemnation. As if it were possible that so great labour on the part of so great a naturalist should have led him to a fantastic conclusion' only-to a 'flighty error,' and, as has been often said, though not written, to one absurdity the more.' Such was the language which Lamarck heard during his protracted old age, saddened alike by the weight of years and blindness; this was what people did not hesitate to utter over his grave yet barely closed, and what, indeed, they are still sayingcommonly, too, without any knowledge of what Lamarck maintained, but merely repeating at second hand bad caricatures of his teaching.

"When will the time come when we may see Lamarck's theory discussed-and, I may as well at once say, refuted in some important points-with at any rate the respect due to one of the most illustrious masters of

1 Hist. des Anim. sans Vertèb., vol. i, Introduction, 1 éd., 1815; Syst. des Conn. Positives, Paris, in-8, 1820, 1re part., 2me sec., ch. ii, p. 114, etc.

our science? And when will this theory, the hardihood of which has been greatly exaggerated, become freed from the interpretations and commentaries by the false light of which so many naturalists have formed their opinion concerning it? If its author is to be condemned, let it be, at any rate, not before he has been heard."1

It is not necessary for me to give the extracts from Lamarck which M. Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire quotes in order to show what he really maintained, inasmuch as they will be given at greater length in the following chapter; but I may perhaps say that I have not found M. Geoffroy refuting Lamarck in any essential point.

Professor Haeckel says that to Lamarck " will always belong the immortal glory of having for the first time worked out the theory of descent as an independent scientific theory of the first order, and as the philosophical foundation of the whole science of Biology."

"The Philosophie Zoologique," continues Professor Haeckel," is the first connected exposition of the theory of descent carried out strictly into all its consequences; ... and with the exception of Darwin's work, which appeared exactly half a century later, we know of none which we could in this respect place by the side of the Philosophie Zoologique. How far it was in advance of its time is perhaps best seen from the circumstance that it was not understood by most men, and for fifty years was not spoken of at all.” 2

This is an exaggeration, both as regards the originality of Lamarck's work and the reception it has met with. It is probably more accurate to say with M. Martins that Lamarck's theory has "never yet had the

1

2

Hist. Nat. Gén., vol. ii, p. 407, 1859.

History of Creation, English translation, vol. i, pp. 111, 112.

1

honour of being discussed seriously," not, at least, in connection with the name of its originators.

So completely has this been so that the author of the Vestiges of Creation, even in the edition of 1860, in which he unreservedly acknowledges the adoption of Lamarck's views, not unfrequently speaks disparagingly of Lamarck himself, and never gives him his due meed of recognition. I am not, therefore, wholly displeased to find this author conceiving himself to have been treated by Mr. Charles Darwin with some of the injustice which he has himself inflicted on Lamarck.

In the 1859 edition of the Origin of Species, and in a very prominent place, Mr. Darwin says: "The author of the Vestiges of Creation would, I presume, say that after a certain number of unknown generations, some bird had given birth to a woodpecker, and some plant to a mistletoe, and that these had been produced perfect as we now see them." This is the only allusion to the Vestiges which I have found in the first edition of the Origin of Species.

Those who have read the 1853 edition of the Vestiges will not be surprised to find the author rejoining, in his edition of 1860, that it was to be regretted Mr. Darwin should have read the Vestiges "nearly as much amiss as though, like its declared opponents, he had an interest in misunderstanding it." And a little lower he adds that Mr. Darwin's book in no essential respect contradicts the Vestiges; "on the contrary, while adding to its explanations of nature, it expresses substantially the same general ideas." It is right to say that the passage thus objected to is not to be found in later editions of

1

M. Martins' edition of the Philosophie Zoologique, Paris, 1873. Introd., p. vi.

2 Origin of Species, p. 3, 1859.

3

Vestiges of Creation, ed. 1860, Proofs, Illustrations, etc., p. lxiv.