554 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



called loudly for exposition, and he proceeded to deal with them with a vigour and 

 thoroughness which, in view of the facts at his disposal, must ever be remembered 

 as a remarkable advance on the work of those who had gone before him. 



Moreover, he did this with marked single-mindedness, with a clear apprecia- 

 tion of the changes which further knowledge and research would certainly bring 

 about. " The thoughts, arguments, and explanations set forth in the present 

 work should therefore be looked upon merely as opinions which I propose, 

 with the intention of setting forth what appears to me to be true, and what may 

 indeed actually be true." " In publishing these observations, together with the 

 conclusions that I have drawn from them, my purpose is to invite enlightened 

 men who love the study of nature to follow them out, verify them, and draw 

 from them on their side whatever conclusions they think justified." Finally he 

 concludes his Preface, from which the above quotations have been taken, as 

 follows : " I shall have attained my end if those who love natural science find 

 in this work any views and principles that are useful to them ; if the observations 

 which I have set forth, and which are my own, are confirmed or approved by those 

 who have had occasion to study the same objects ; and if the ideas which they 

 succeed in giving rise to, whatever they may be, advance our knowledge or set us 

 on the way to reach unknown truths." 



One finds in these extracts the spirit of a great man, prepared for the discovery 

 of new facts, the elaboration of theories which will take the place of his own, 

 anxious to learn whatever they may teach, without fear of results, without anxiety 

 for the permanence of his own views ; the spirit of a man with a broad under- 

 standing and a generous heart, a lovable man whose whole life is devoted, not 

 to the acquisition of fame, but to the search for truth. One is convinced, there- 

 fore, that no matter whether his theories eventually be proved to be true or not, 

 they were honestly conceived and are worthy of our respect. 



Mr. Elliot's translation is as nearly literal as possible ; he has succeeded in 

 overcoming considerable difficulties in order to reproduce, in language used by 

 modern zoologists, terms which are now obsolete, and has traced a number of 

 generic and specific names used by Lamarck which are no longer recognisable 

 by the majority of zoologists. The judgment shown in these matters gives the 

 reader great confidence that in this translation there can be no mistake as to 

 what Lamarck actually meant, and, as he has been constantly misunderstood and 

 misrepresented, this is a matter of very considerable importance. 



But Mr. Elliot has done more than present us with an admirable translation of 

 Lamarck's great book. He has added an Introduction of some eighty pages 

 which must, we think, be considered to be a very valuable aid to knowledge of the 

 man and his work. In order to understand the causes which induced the author 

 to arrive at a conception of the theory by which alone he is remembered to-day, 

 in order to grasp fairly its development and its relation to the thought and 

 work of his contemporaries, such an introduction is of great help. So far as we 

 know, no such serious attempt to accomplish this purpose has hitherto appeared in 

 our own language. 



At the same time, while we cordially appreciate Mr. Elliot's work, we are not 

 entirely in accord with his judgment of the author. The immense difficulties 

 under which Lamarck laboured, although acknowledged, are perhaps not sufficiently 

 recognised. The faulty tools with which he had to work, the scarcity of facts at 

 his disposal, the bigotry which surrounded him and under which he must have 

 been brought up, must all have conduced to make the researches which he 

 embarked upon extremely difficult to carry out. Recognition of these difficulties 



