14:4: mk. darwin's work and 



tions to his views, certainly all others are absolutely out 

 of court. 



Take the Lamarckian hypothesis, for example. La- 

 marck w r as a great naturalist, and to a certain extent 

 went the right way to work ; he argued from what was 

 undoubtedly a true cause of some of the phenomena of 

 organic nature. He said it is a matter of experience 

 that an animal may be modified more or less in conse- 

 quence of its desires and consequent actions. Thus, if 

 a man exercise himself as a blacksmith, his arms will 

 become strong and muscular ; such organic modifica- 

 tion is a result of this particular action and exercise. 

 Lamarck thought that by a very simple supposition 

 based on this truth he could explain the oirgin of the 

 various animal species : he said, for example, that the 

 short-legged birds which live on fish, had been converted 

 into the long-legged waders by desiring to get the fish 

 without wetting their feet, and so stretching their legs 

 more and more through successive generations. If 

 Lamarck could have showm experimentally, that even 

 races of animals could be produced in this way, there 

 might have been some ground for his speculations. 

 But he could show nothing of the kind, and his hy- 

 pothesis has pretty well dropped into oblivion, as it de- 

 served to do. I said in an earlier lecture that there are 

 hypotheses and hypotheses, and when people tell you 

 that Mr. Darwin's strongly-based hypothesis is nothing 

 but a mere modification of Lamarck's, you will know 

 what to think of their capacity for forming a judgment 

 on this subject. 



But you must recollect that when I say I think it 

 is either Mr. Darwin's hypothesis or nothing ; that 

 either we must take his view r , or look upon the whole 



