226 LAMARCK AND DARWIN 



same time to believe that new organs are formed in direct 

 response to needs felt by the organism. Lamarck could 

 never resolve this antinomy, and his speculations were thrown 

 into confusion by it. To this cause is due the frequent 

 obscurity of his writings. 



Should we be right in laying stress upon the psycho- 

 logical side of Lamarck's theory, and disregarding the 

 materialistic dress in which, perhaps under the influence of 

 the materialism current in his youth, he clothed his essentially 

 vitalistic thought? Everything goes to prove it his constant 

 preoccupation with psychological questions, his tacit assimila- 

 tion of organ-formation to instinctive behaviour, his constant 

 insistence on the importance of bcsoin and Juibititdc. 



Let us not forget the profundity of his main idea, that, 

 exception made for the lower forms, the animal is essentially 

 active, that it always reacts to the external world, is never 

 passively acted upon. Let us not forget that he pointed 

 out the essentially psychological moment implied in all 

 processes of individual adaptation. With keen insight 

 he realised that conscious intelligence counts for little in 

 evolution, and focussed attention upon the unconscious but 

 obscurely psychical processes of instinct and morphogenesis. 



Not without reason have the later schools of evolutionary 

 thought, who developed the psychological and vitalistic side 

 of his doctrine, called themselves Neo-Lamarckians. 



We shall say then that Lamarck, in spite of his materialism, 

 was the founder of the " psychological " theory of evolution. 



Lamarck stood curiously aloof and apart from the scientific 

 thought of his day. 1 He took no interest in the morpho- 

 logical problems that filled the minds of Cuvier and Geoffroy ; 

 he had indeed no feeling at all for morphology. He did not 

 realise, like Cuvier, the cairi'awiicc tics parties, the marvellous 

 co-ordination of parts to form a whole; he had little concep- 

 tion of what is really implied in the word "organism." He 

 was not, like Geoffroy, imbued with a lively sense of the unity 

 of plan and composition, and of the .significance of vestigial 



1 There is no evidence that he was influenced by Erasmus Darwin, 

 who forestalled his evolution theory, and was indeed more aware of its 

 vitalistic implications. Sec S. I'.utler, Evolution, Olii ml New, London, 

 1879, for an excellent account of Erasmus Darwin. 



