244 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



GENERAL MISCONCEPTION CONCERNING LAMARCK 

 HIS PHILOSOPHICAL POSITION. 



" IF Cuvier," says M. Isidore Geoffrey St. Hilaire,* " is 

 the modern successor of Lirma3us, 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 natu- 

 ral 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 writ- 

 ings.! He returns to the subject and states his views 



* ' Hist. Nat. Gen.,' torn. ii. p. 404, 1859. 



t ' Systeme des Auimaux sans Yertebres,' Paris, in-8, an. ix. 

 (1801) ; ' Discours d'Ouverture,' p. 12, &c. ; ' Recherches sur 1'Organi- 



