SUMMARY OF <PHILOSOPHIE ZOOLOGIQUE? 3 01 



Here we have absolute agreement with Dr. Erasmus 

 Darwin,* except that there seems a tendency in this 

 passage to assign more effect to the direct action of 

 conditions than is common with Lamarck. He seems 

 to be mixing Buffon and Dr. Darwin. 



" In consequence of change in any of these respects, 

 the faculties of an animal become extended and enlarged 

 by use : they become diversified through the long con- 

 tinuance of the new habits, until little by little their 

 whole structure and nature, as well as the organs 

 originally affected, participate in the effects of all these 

 influences, and are modified to an extent which is 

 capable of transmission to offspring." f 



This sentence alone would be sufficient to show that 

 Lamarck was as much alive as Buffon and Dr. Darwin 

 were before him, to the fact that one of the most 

 important conditions of an animal's life, is the relation 

 in which it stands to the other inhabitants of the same 

 neighbourhood from which the survival of the fittest 

 follows as a self-evident proposition. Nothing, therefore, 

 can be more unfounded than the attempt, so frequently 

 made by writers who have not read Lamarck, or who 

 think others may be trusted not to do so, to repre- 

 sent him as maintaining something perfectly different 

 from what is maintained by modern writers on evolution. 

 The difference, in so far as there is any difference, is 

 one of detail only. Lamarck would not have hesitated 

 to admit, that, if animals are modified in a direction 

 which is favourable to them, they will have a better 

 chance of surviving and transmitting their favourable 

 * See ante, pp. 226-228. t ' Phil. Zool,,' torn. i. p. 239. 



