THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' 1 89 



of conscience about, on the ground of needless savagery, is 

 one I wrote on the ' Vestiges ' while under that influence. 



With respect to the ' Philosophic Zoologique,' it is no 

 reproach to Lamarck to say that the discussion of the Species 

 question in that work, whatever might be said for it in 1809, 

 was miserably below the level of the knowledge of half a 

 century later. In that interval of time the elucidation of 

 the structure of the lower animals and plants had given rise 

 to wholly new conceptions of their relations ; histology and 

 embryology, in the modern sense, had been created ; physio- 

 logy had been reconstituted ; the facts of distribution, 

 geological and geographical, had been prodigiously multi- 

 plied and reduced to order. To any biologist whose studies 

 had carried him beyond mere species-mongering in 1850, one- 

 half of Lamarck's arguments were obsolete and the other 

 half erroneous, or defective, in virtue of omitting to deal with 

 the various classes of evidence which had been brought to 

 light since his time. Moreover his one suggestion as to the 

 cause of the gradual modification of species effort excited 

 by change of conditions was, on the face of it, inapplicable to 

 the whole vegetable world. I do not think that any impartial 

 judge who reads the ' Philosophie Zoologique' now, and who 

 afterwards takes up Lyell's trenchant and effectual criticism 

 (published as far back as 1830), will be disposed to allot 

 to Lamarck a much higher place in the establishment of 

 biological evolution than that which Bacon assigns to himself 

 in relation to physical science generally, buccinator tantum* 



But, by a curious irony of fate, the same influence which 

 led me to put as little faith in modern speculations on this 

 subject, as in the venerable traditions recorded in the first two 

 chapters of Genesis, was perhaps more potent than any other 



* Erasmus Darwin first promul- claims have failed to show that he, 



gated Lamarck's fundamental con- in any respect, anticipated the 



ceptions, and, with greater logical central idea of the ' Origin of 



consistency, he had applied them Species.' 

 to plants. But the advocates of his 



