82 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN. 



declared to be a subject beyond the reach of scientific 

 knowledge, yet even in the beginning of our century there 

 were independent eminent minds, who, undeterred by the 

 prevailing doctrines, took these questions quite seriously in 

 hand. The so-called earlier school of Natural Philosophy, 

 which has so often been abused, deserves the highest praise 

 in this respect. It was represented in France by Jean 

 Lamarck, Buffon, Geoffroy St. Hilaire, and Ducrotay Blain- 

 ville; in Germany, by Wolfgang Goethe, Reinhold Trevi- 

 ranus, Schelling, and Lorenz Oken. 



The gifted naturalist and philosopher who must here 

 be mentioned first, is Jean Lamarck. He was born at 

 Bazentin, in Picardy, August 1, 1744^, and was the son of 

 a clergyman who destined him for the Church. He, how- 

 ever, first joined the army, and as a boy of sixteen dis- 

 tinguished himself by his braverj' in the battle of Lippstadt 

 in Westphalia, which resulted unfavourably for the French. 

 He was then stationed for several years in a garrison in 

 the south of France. Here he became acquainted with 

 the interesting^ flora on the Mediterranean coast, which 

 soon won him over to the study of botany. He resigned 

 his commission, and published, as early as the year 1778, 

 his valuable Flore Frangaise. For years he could gain no 

 scientific position. It was only in his fiftieth year, in 1794, 

 that he obtained a poor professorship of zoology at the 

 museum of the Jardin de Plantes in Paris. His position 

 caused him to enter more deeply into the study of zoology, 

 towards the classification of which his labours were as 

 valuable and important as those which he had dedicated 

 to systematic botany. In 1802 he published his Considera- 

 tions sur les corps vlvants, which contains the first germs of 



