310 THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



nature, there is, according to Lamarck, incorporated as an essential com- 

 ponent fire, which penetrates the whole of existence; it is a "fluid," which 

 appears under various modifications, as heat, as electric and magnetic fluid, 

 and in living beings still further specialized. It produces colour-perceptions, 

 sound — Lamarck denies that the air conveys the sound, for a cannon-shot 

 is heard at a distance better with the ear to the ground than in the air — ■ 

 , and, further, chemical changes, the various kinds of which it would take too 

 long to enumerate here. The serious offences against contemporary physical 

 and chemical knowledge of which Lamarck is guilty in this work will have 

 been sufficiently illustrated by the above. And it would be a waste of time to 

 trace the sources out of which he created these wild fancies; he himself, in- 

 deed, asserts that they are "independent of any theory" and they are charac- 

 terized from beginning to end by sheer dilettantism. Fortunately, however, 

 Lamarck did not retain this standpoint always; although more than fifty 

 years old when he published his Memoires, he managed to escape out of the 

 helpless maze of thought that they involve and to create works which have 

 kept his memory alive even up to the most recent times — a spiritual test of 

 strength indeed, which is almost without its counterpart in the history of 

 science. That this was so is not due to his having acquired any essentially 

 better knowledge of physics and chemistry than others,^ but to his having 

 applied himself whole-heartedly to zoology. In this field, thanks to his long 

 experience as a lecturer and a museum-worker, he had gained a many-sided 

 knowledge of form, whereon he was able to base a system of thought that 

 was not only original, but also truly scientific, as regards both form and sub- 

 stance. 



The result of Lamarck's theoretical speculations in the sphere of bi- 

 ology — he it was, in fact, who created the word "biology" — is recorded 

 in three separate works: Kecberches sur V organisation des corps vivants, of i8ox; 

 Philosophic ^(^oologique, of 1809; and the introduction to his great work His- 

 toire naturelle des animaux sans verfebres (i8i5-xx). The first of these presents 

 in short and concise form the theory of the development of life that made 

 Lamarck famous. It has been completely overshadowed, however, in the 

 history of biology by Philosophie Zfiologique, which is the one work of 

 Lamarck that is regarded as a classic and which has in more recent times been 

 frequently reprinted and translated into many languages. It is really an ex- 

 pansion of the previous work, full of repetitions and containing a number 

 of additions, which in many instances, but not in all, are improvements. 

 In the third of these works the author once more recapitulates the theory in 

 summary form, as he entertained it towards the close of his life. 



2 In his latest works, it is true, he acknowledges the existence of oxygen, a fact of which 

 he had apparently been convinced by some chemist, but on the whole he maintains the old stand- 

 point. 



