3. THE PRINCIPLES OF LAMARCKISM. 



As the word " Darwinism ' : does not signify the proper 

 theoretical system of Charles Darwin, so Lamarckism as 

 commonly understood nowadays is a good deal removed 

 from the original views of Jean Baptiste Lamarck. 

 Lamarckism is generally regarded as reducing all organic 

 diversities to differences in the needs of individual life, but 

 Lamarck himself, as must be emphasised from the very 

 beginning, did not at all maintain the opinion that the 

 great characteristics of the types were only due to such 

 accidental factors. He supposed a sort of law of organisation 

 to be at the root of systematics, as developed in history, 

 and the needs of life were only responsible, according to 

 him, for splitting the given types of organisation into 

 their ultimate branches. Thus Lamarck, to a great extent 

 at any rate, belongs to a group of authors that we shall 

 have to study afterwards : authors who regard an unknown 

 law of phylogenetic development as the real basis of 

 transformism. Modern so-called ISTeo-Lamarckism, on the 

 other hand, has indeed conceded the principle of needs to 

 be the sole principle of transformism. Let us then study 



Lamarckism in its dogmatic modern form. 



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