THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



no discontinuity in its parts, or which at least has not 

 always had a discontinuity; although it may be true 

 that because of some extinct species one may now 

 occur. It follows that the species which end each 

 branch of the general series join, at least on one side, 

 to other neighbouring species which merge with 

 them."^ To show how even those who ascribe genius 

 to Lamarck and are expounding his doctrine, yet ac- 

 cuse him of the most puerile ideas, we may stop for 

 a moment to give Elliot's critique of this perfectly 

 sound idea. He states that Lamarck believed that, if 

 it were not for environmental influences, man's an- 

 cestors would include every existing species of animal 

 and he then makes the absolutely frivolous comment 

 that man could not once have been an intestinal worm 

 when there were no intestines, and that his existence 

 as a flea would have been precarious when there was 

 nothing to bite but jelly-fishes. Such reasoning is not 

 fit for a school-boy. We might take it for granted that 

 Lamarck would have foreseen that if there had been 

 no environmental changes then there would have 

 been no intestinal worms and no fleas, but an entirely 

 different chain. As a matter of fact Lamarck does 

 not say that if there were no environmental changes 

 there would have been a single linear succession, but 

 each terminal species would have a linear chain with- 

 out branches to a prototypal monad, which is a quite 

 different matter. 



^Philosophie Zoologique, vol. I, p. 76 [p. 37]. 



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