PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 19 



The cogency of Lamarck's reasoning, especially when we 

 consider the time at which he wrote, is sufficiently apparent 

 to all, but it may not be without interest to note the manner 

 in which it struck so excellent a judge as Professor Huxley 

 as late as 1876. In contrasting it with the views of Cuvier 

 who maintained the fixity of species and their special crea 

 tion, Professor Huxley says: "It is impossible to read the 

 ' Discours sur les Revolutions ' of Cuvier, and the ' Principes ' 

 of Lamarck without being struck with the superiority of the 

 former in sobriety of thought, precision of statement, and 

 coolness of judgment. But it is no less impossible to consider 

 the present state of biological science without being impressed 

 by the circumstance that it is the conception of Lamarck 

 which has triumphed and that of Cuvier which has been van 

 quished ... It is not too much to say that the facts of 

 biology known at the present day are all consistent with and 

 in favor of the view of species entertained by Lamarck, while 

 they are unfavorable to, if not incompatible with, that advo 

 cated by Cuvier."* 



DARWINISM. 



Darwin was acquainted with Lamarck's views when he 

 wrote the Origin of Species, and notwithstanding the fact that 

 whenever he refers to Lamarck, as he does in several of his 

 lettersf he does so in a very disparaging way, he must have 

 been greatly influenced by them, or at least by views of the 

 same import expressed by others as well as by Lamarck, but 

 especially those of his grandfather Erasmus Darwin/ who 

 anticipated, rather from the standpoint of the poet and seer, 

 the truths to which Lamarck was led by a life-long study 'of 

 living things. 



*Am. Cycl., Art. Species. 



t Life and Letters, Vol. I, p. 542, Vol. II, p. 198. 



