Cuvier's Biographical Memoir of' M, de Lamarck* 13 



mitted, in these liis two earliest works, that all we know of it is, 

 that living beings all come from individuals similar to them- 

 selves, but that it is impossible for us to ascertain the physi- 

 cal cause which has given birth to the first individual of each 

 species. 



To these two writings he added a third of a polemical de- 

 scription, viz. a refutation of the pneumatic theory,* in which 

 he, in some measure, challenged the new chemists to the com- 

 bat : conceiving, like so many other authors of system, that to 

 keep silence would be to cause his system to be forgotten, and 

 not doubting that if he could only enter it in the lists, it would 

 obtain an easy triumph, and the public, attracted by the eclat 

 of the dispute, would not hesitate to adopt a system of which 

 they could scarcely otherwise be aware of the existence. 



To his great regret, neither this refutation, nor his exposi- 

 tion, met with any reply ; no one considered it necessary. He 

 was himself, in fact, too well aware, that the whole of this edi- 

 fice rested on two assertions equally conjectural ; the one, that 

 substances do not enter into combinations, unless modified in 

 their nature ; the other, that it is not reasonable to believe, that 

 nature impresses on them a tendency to such a change. De- 

 prived of one of these foundations, the whole falls to the 

 ground. 



We have mentioned that M. de Lamarck at this period still 

 conceived it impossible to remount to the first origin of living 

 beings : this was a great step yet remaining for him, and he was 

 not long in making it. In 1802 he published his Researches on 

 Living Bodies, "I* containing a physiology peculiar to himself, in 



• Refutation of the Pneumatic Theory, or of the new doctrine of modern 

 chemists, presented article after article, in a series of answers to the prin- 

 ciples published by C. Fourcroy in his Chemical Philosophy ; preceded by 

 a Supplement to the theory explained in the work, entitled. Researches on 

 the Causes of the Principal Facts in Physics, to which this forms a neces- 

 sary appendage. Paris, 1830, 1 vol. 8vo. 



•f- Researches on the organization of living bodies, and particularly on its 

 origin, on the cause of its developments and the progress of its composition, 

 and on that which, by continually tending to destroying it in every indivi- 

 dual, necessarily brings on death. Preceded by a discourse delivered at the 

 opening of the Zoological Course in the Museum of Natural History, Paris, 

 1802. 1 voL 8vo. 



