10 EVOLUTION AND GENETICS 



hesitant in expressing it. His writings are noted for their excellent 

 diction, but on the point of evolution they are vague and obscure. 

 Some writers have attributed this reticence to the weight of ecclesi- 

 astical authority for special creation which then obtained, and to 

 this we may add the knowledge that "he was a man of elegance, 

 with an assured position in society." (Locy.) Such standing 

 would hardly be conducive to militant opposition to the church. 

 In spite of the vagueness which he displayed on evolution, there 

 is a general agreement that he was the first to believe in the direct 

 modification of organisms by their environment. He also antici- 

 pated Malthus in the idea of struggle for existence as a compensa- 

 tion for overproduction in maintaining the balance of nature, and 

 expressed other opinions which are strongly suggestive of Darwin's 

 theory of Natural Selection. 



Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles, also believed in 

 the inheritance of acquired characters, or environmental effects, 

 but instead of emphasizing the formative power of the environ- 

 ment he recognized the activity of forces within the organism 

 responding to environmental conditions as the basis of change. 

 He, too, recognized the occurrence in nature of a struggle for ex- 

 istence, and carried the idea one step further than Buffon by sug- 

 gesting its ultimate beneficial results. His works vaguely sug- 

 gest sexual selection and the idea of protective coloration. Some 

 biologists have speculated on the possible influence of his work on 

 that of Lamarck, l^ut Packard's vigorous defense of the integrity of 

 Lamarck's contributions leads to the conclusion that he did not 

 know of Darwin's writings. It is certain, however, that Erasmus 

 Darwin's work received some contemporary recognition, and since 

 he was a physician and naturalist, it was probably sound enough to 

 deserve even more. 



Lamarck (Fig. 1) later and apparently independently developed 

 the ideas of his predecessors to such a degree that he ranks second 

 only to Darwin as the founder of one of the schools of modern 

 evolutionary theory. The available accounts of his life afford an 

 interesting evidence of the adverse conditions under which valu- 

 able scientific work may be produced. Lamarck was born in 1744, 

 the eleventh child in a military family. All of his brothers entered 

 the army, so Jean Baptiste was placed in training for the clergy. 

 This was so little to his taste that he followed the army into Ger- 

 many and in his short period of service displayed "the courage 



