LAMARCK, THE FOUNDER OF EVOLUTION. 26 



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LAMARCK, THE FOUNDER OF EVOLUTION.* 



By Professor W. H. DALL. 



TT is now nearly a century since Lamarck published the outlines of 

 -*- his theory of evolution by descent with modifications transmitted 

 by heredity and initiated by dynamic impulses; originating in the 

 mass of animals from the environment, and in the higher and more 

 intelligent groups partly from within the developing organism itself. 



Met by the ridicule and unfriendly criticisms of the 'creationists,' 

 which were the more generally accepted on account of the modesty, 

 retiring disposition and aversion to controversy of Lamarck himself, 

 handicapped by the blindness and poverty of his later years, his views 

 have been little known in their true shape, and the majority of natural- 

 ists have been content to receive them in the garbled form in which 

 they were presented by those who rejected them. Theoretical, as the 

 conditions of science at the time made obligatory; in some respects 

 with our present light obviously erroneous; the philosophy of Lamarck 

 nevertheless contained also a body of opinion substantially in harmony 

 with the evolutionary ideas of Spencer and Darwin, and which has been 

 established by the work of modern students of nature, among the 

 axioms of science. 



It was then a pious task which Professor Packard undertook, to 

 present in its true form the zoological philosophy of this venerable 

 pioneer, that the present generation of philosophers might learn their 

 obligations to him. To this sympathetic exposition of Lamarck's views 

 the author has prefixed a summary of the meager details in regard to 

 his private life and public services, which a careful search has been able 

 to discover ; illustrated them by pictures of the house in which Lamarck 

 was born, and that in which most of his work was done and where he 

 died, adding a facsimile from his manuscript. Finally a chapter has 

 been added in which the revival of Lamarckian ideas among an influ- 

 ential body of modern students is summarized. 



Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck was 

 born August 1, 1744, at Bazentin-le-Petit, Department of the Somme, 

 near Longueval. His mother was Marie Frangoise de Fontaine. His 

 family belonged to an ancient race of the minor nobility of Beam. 

 On the death of his father in 1760, he joined the French army, then 

 campaigning in Germany. Almost immediately afterward he achieved 



• Lamarck, the founder of evolution, his life and work, by Alpheua S. 

 Packard, M.D., LL.D. Longmans Green and Co., New York, 190L Pp. xiv-f- 

 451, 8", ills. 



